Hard Wired
 Under
Construction
essential father" hypothesis, the belief that fathers are "essential" for positive child development. Proposes an alternative, the "important father" hypothesis. ... During migration they lived in an industrial society where roles are more flexible and permissive and relations between women and men are more informal. The latter does not mean, however, that sex role stereotypes are not also apparent in the host country ( Pleck & Brannon, 1978;Benin & Agostinelli, 1988). Upon return, migrants bring with them whatever experience of village life they had acquired before migration along with the experience acquired abroad. ... ... At this point, it should be noted that a major part of what is usually meant by «change in sex roles» is specifically change in the traditional allocation of work and family roles between men and women. Moreover, traditional sex role attitudes prescribe the specialization of work and family responsibilities by sex, but a new option for each sex to integrate roles in both work and family is now emerging ( Pleck et al., 1978;Scanzoni, 1980;Bird, Bird, & Scruggs, 1984;Benin et al., 1988). In our study, we defined the term «change» as the degree of differentiation (or the degree of similarity) between return migrants and non-migrants, both of whom were living in Greece at the time of the study. ... ... With respect to correlations,
demographic variables relate to different tasks for each
group. In accordance with previous studies ( Bird et al.,
1984;Pleck & Brannon, 1978;Scanzoni, 1980;Maret &
Finay, 1984), a low frequency of sharing is associated with
an extended type of family for some, a negative evaluation
of financial situation for others, and a low level of
education for others. In contrast, high sharing is
correlated with a positive evaluation of financial situation
and a high income for nonmigrants, as well as a nuclear type
of family and a semi-rural place of residence for some of
the migrants. ... Understanding
gender and health: Old patterns, new trends, and future
directions View Women are counseled that the key
to success lies in the acquisition of characteristics
typically attributed to the male sex role, such as
assertiveness and rationality. Yet negative consequences of
the traditional male role for men's physical and mental
health have been documented (David & Brannon, 1976;
Pleck, 1976; Pleck & Brannon, 1978; Waldron &
Johnston, 1976a, 1976b). Women who adopt characteristics of
the traditional male role are likely to suffer no fewer
negative consequences. ... Summarizing 25
Years of Research on Men's Gender Role Conflict Using the
Gender Role Conflict Scale This article reviews 232 empirical studies that used the Gender Role Conflict Scale (GRCS) over the past 25 years (1982-2007). The article introduces the gender role conflict (GRC) construct using past definitions and theoretical models. The research findings for diverse men are summarized and studies related to men's intrapersonal, interpersonal, and therapeutic lives are analyzed. The empirical support, criticism, and challenges to the gender role conflict research program are reviewed. A contextual research paradigm with seven domains is presented and 18 research questions and two research models are discussed to foster more moderation and mediation studies on men's GRC. A new diagnostic schema to assess men's GRC in therapy and during psychoeducational interventions is discussed. The research review concludes that GRC is significantly related to men's psychological and interpersonal problems and therefore an important construct for psychologists and other helping professionals. From a developmental perspective, gendered expectations become especially salient to youth during adolescence and throughout emerging adulthood [11]. During this stage of life, social acceptance is central to behaviour, illustrated by heightened pressure to adhere to stereotypical gender roles [12,13]. In contrast, theory and research indicate less rigid gender roles throughout the middle and older years [14]. ... In the present study, overall degree of conformity to masculine norms decreased across the lifespan, with the likelihood of being in a higher conformity category decreasing with age. These findings support our hypothesis and are consistent with existing research [15,22,23] and theory [12,14] demonstrating less rigid gender roles in older men. The results also revealed an overall effect of age on depressive symptoms with those aged 51-55 years reporting significantly lower depressive symptoms compared to all age groups except for those aged 36-50 years. ... .In addition, clinicians working with high conforming males could help male clients develop more flexibility in relation to what it means to be a man [42], as well as how ageing may impact on perceptions of masculinity [18]. This may be particularly important for older males undergoing important life transitions [12]. ... ------------------------------------------- Fatherhood and MasculinityJOSEPH H. PLECKTO ANALYZE LINKAGES between fatherhood and masculinity, this chapterintroduces the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model as a conceptual frame-work. This model distinguishes fatherhood as a parental status fromfatherhood as parenting behavior and identity. It also differentiates betweenmasculinity as male gender status and masculinity as males’ masculinityorientation. Using this model, I systematically analyze the potential inter-relationships between these dual aspects of fatherhood and masculinity andtheir complex possible connections to child outcomes and to outcomes forfathers themselves.The chapter then considers the dominant idea in public discourse aboutfatherhood and masculinity: the ‘‘essential father’’ hypothesis. The paternalessentiality thesis holds that fathers make an essential, unique, and, morespeci?cally, uniquely male contribution to child development. Framing theessentiality hypothesis in the context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Modelsuggests that paternal essentiality entails six component ideas: (1) genderdifferences in parenting, (2) associations between father presence and childoutcomes, (3) the mediation of those associations speci?cally by paternalinvolvement, (4) the attribution of paternal presence effects to father’smaleness, (5) the uniqueness of fathering’s effects on child outcomes, and(6) the association of paternal masculinity orientation to paternal involvementand child outcomes. A review of research in each of these six areas revealshighly quali?ed or modest support at best.I then suggest an alternative interpretation: the ‘‘important father’’hypothesis. This view holds that good fathering is one of many factorspromoting good child outcomes, having positive consequences indepen-dent of other in?uences such as good mothering, and ha ving these con-sequences in ways not necessarily linked to fathers’ masculinity. ThoughThe work reported here was supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education andExtension Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, under Project No. ILLU-45–0366 to JosephH. Pleck.27 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 28being one of many sources of positive development rather than being a ll-determinative, good fathering is no less important on that account. I arguethat the paternal importance hypothesis does not signify a demotion inour assessment of fathering’s value for children’s dev elopment. Rather, itbrings our understanding of the potential impact of good fathering in linewith the way researchers understand the effects of most other in?uences onpositive outcomes.The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model identi?es many other possible inter-sections between fatherhood and masculinity besides hypotheses aboutpaternal essentiality or importance. As an illustrative example, the chapterreviews research on masculinity-related dynamics in the connection betweenfatherhood and generativity. These investigations suggest that fathers’ mas-culinity in?uences this linkage in a complex manner, revealing some ways inwhich parenting and generativity may be more closely linked in men than inwomen, but other respects in which they may be less strongly related. Thechapter concludes with recommendations for future research and practice.Some restrictions in the chapter’s scope should be acknowledged. Thischapter focuses on fatherhood and masculinity primarily in the NorthAmerican context, as the literature even for this limited setting is extensive.Also, in the North American and British academic contexts, the legitimacy ofapplying concepts of masculinity to nonmajority males is contested (Connell,2005; Schrock & Schwalbe, 2009), a debate not addressed here.THE FATHERHOOD–MASCULINITY MODELFatherhood and masculinity potentially intersect in multiple ways (Marsiglio& Pleck, 2005). As an analytic framework for systematically considering theirinterrelationships, this section introduces the Fatherhood–MasculinityModel. This framework systematically describes a broad set of the possiblelinkages between fatherhood and masculinity in relation to child outcomes aswell as in relation to outcomes for fathers themselves. Due to the manyconnections entailed in the model, it is presented in three steps. Conceptualdistinctions between two components of fatherhood and between two aspectsof masculinity are initially introduced, and relationships among the fourresulting concepts are analyzed. Child outcomes are then added to the model,followed by outcomes for fathers themselves.FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITYFigure 2.1 depicts the ?rst subsection of the model, concerning the associ-ations between fatherhood and masculinity. This part of the model makes akey distinction between fatherhood as a parental status and as parenting, anda further distinction between masculinity as paternal male gender status andas masculinity orientation.Fatherhood as a Parental Status and as Parenting In scholarly writing, the termfatherhood is used in two different ways that are important to distinguish.First, many researchers use the term to refer to fatherhood as a parental status.28 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 29This can be interpreted narrowly as fertility status, that is, being a biologicalfather or not. It can also be interpreted broadly to also include men whofunction as ‘‘social fathers’’ to children who are not their biological offspring byvirtue of adoption, being a stepparent, or taking parental responsibility for achild in other ways. Fatherhood as parental status includes not only whetherone is a father, but also other dimensions such as the father’s age at becoming aparent; his total number of children (parity); the spacing of his children; andwhether he has only biological children, only social children, or both. In recentresearch, there has been particular interest in in?uences on the timing of ?rstfatherhood, in the consequences of fatherhood timing, and in linkages betweenthe fatherhood transition and other role transitions (Astone, Dariotis, Sonen-stein, Pleck, & Hynes, in press; Dariotis, Pleck, Astone, & Sonenstein, in press).Scholars also use the term fatherhood in a second sense to refer to fathers’parenting of their biological or social children, conveyed by the term fathering.Most research on fatherhood in the human development and family studies?eld concerns fathering in this sense. The most widely used construct inthe study of men’s fathering is paternal involvement (Lamb, Pleck, Charnov,& Levine, 1985, 1987; Pleck, Lamb, & Levine, 1985). In research practice, theinvolvement concept has come to encompass not only fathers’ amount ofinteraction with their child, but also their warmth–responsiveness andtheir control, expressed especially in monitoring and decision making (seechapter 3). In this chapter, the terms fathering and parenting refer to involve-ment in this broader sense, as well as to paternal identity, fathers’ self-meanings in the father role (LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993; Maurer, Pleck, & Rane,2001). In summary, the broader term fatherhood will be used here to denoteboth fathers’ parental status and their parenting.Masculinity as Paternal Male Gender Status and as Masculinity Orientation Theterm masculinity is also used in two different ways. Male gender status refers toa person’s being male rather than female. In the biogenetic perspective, maleParental statusChild presence, #, spacing,biological and/or socialParentingPaternal malegender statusPaternalmasculinityorientationDenotes amoderator effectADCBEFGFigure 2.1 Fatherhood and Masculinity.The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 29 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 30gender status results from having the XY chromosome. In the social con-structionist interpretation, it refers to being in one of two, dichotomous,socially de?ned, and socially constructed gender categories, which, althoughbased on biological sex, are socially construed and elaborated. Masculinityorientation, by contrast, refers to variations within the male gender statuscategory. It concerns variations among the persons holding male gender statusin the extent to which they have male gender-typed characteristics orattitudes, or put more simply, in how ‘‘masculine’’ they are.In this chapter, masculinity will be used as the broad term incorporating bothmale gender status and masculinity orientation. In this usage, all biological andsocial fathers are members of the male gender status category. Fathers can vary,however, in their masculinity orientations. Fathers’ potentially essential andunique contribution to child development, to be analyzed in detail in a latersection, concerns masculinity in both senses: the effect on children of having aparent who is male (gender status), and the effect of having a male parent whois more rather than less masculine (masculinity orientation).It should be noted that researchers have interpreted masculinity orienta-tion in two different ways: masculinity as a male’s gender-typed personalitydisposition or constellation of traits, and masculinity as a male’s attitudes andbeliefs about how men actually are, and how they should be (Thompson,Pleck, & Ferrera, 1992). Since the 1970s, the ?rst conception has been opera-tionalized with measures such as the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974; seeLenney, 1991, for a review), yielding scores for an individual’s masculinity(M) and femininity (F). The second conception is operationalized withmeasures of attitudes about men’s ideal and actual characteristics (Marcell,Ford, Pleck, & Sonenstein, 2007; Pleck & O’Donnell, 2001; Pleck, Sonenstein, &Ku, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b). To illustrate the central distinction betweenthe two interpretations, according to the former, high or strong masculinityorientation is shown by a male reporting that he is, for example, assertive;according to the latter, it is shown by a male saying that he thinks males shouldbe assertive. Within the second interpretation concerning attitudes, a furtherimportant distinction is between attitudes about how women and men are orshould be different from each other (often labeled as attitudes toward genderor toward women) and attitudes speci?cally about men’s roles (see Pleck etal., 1994a, regarding why the distinction is important).Research linking fatherhood and masculinity orientation has used bothapproaches. Gender studies also employs a third interpretation, masculinityas a ‘‘performance’’ or ‘‘script,’’ interpreted as not an intra-individual pheno-menon but as existing inherently only in interactions among individuals(Larson & Pleck, 1999). However, this third conception has not been widelyused in fatherhood research.Linkages Between Fatherhood and Masculinity The ?rst linkage in Figure 2.1concerns the relationship between parental status and parenting (path A).Being a parent is a precondition for parental behavior (excluding preparatorybehaviors), and generally brings about major changes in parental identity.(This and most other linkages in the ?gures have been studied empirically,but relevant research will generally not be cited in this discussion.) For30 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 31example, the timing of parenthood, the number of children someone has andtheir spacing, and whether they are biological and/or social children canin?uence how parents act and how they think of themselves as parents.Reciprocally, holding particular self-conceptions about what being a parentmeans can in?uence whether and when individuals have children, and when,how many, and whether the children are biological and/or social. Parents’behavioral and identity experience with earlier children also potentiallyaffects their subsequent parenthood decisions.The left side linkages in the model bring fathers’ male gender status intofocus. First, male gender status in?uences the circumstances in which par-enthood occurs (B). For example, on average, men have ?rst children at anolder age than women do. In addition, men are more likely to have stepchil-dren than are women. According to the next linkage (C), male gender statusmay moderate the linkages between parental status and parenting justdiscussed. As examples, becoming a parent as a teen (or late in life), havingmany children or few, or having social children may have a different impacton parental involvement and identity in men than they do in women.Reciprocally, the consequences of being more (or less) engaged as a parentwith one’s ?rst child may affect subsequent parenthood decisions differentlyfor men than for women. Likewise, having strong parental identity maypromote ?rst parenthood and later parenthood to a greater degree, or lesserdegree, among men than it does among women. Fathers’ male gender statuspotentially in?uences their parenting (D). That is, the socially constructedand/or biosocial concomitants of being male may in?uence a man’s involve-ment with his child as well as the nature of his paternal identity.The right side of Figure 2.1 depicts fatherhood–masculinity linkagesinvolving masculinity orientation. In contrast to male gender status, mascu-linity orientation is potentially malleable. Therefore, some linkages involvingmasculinity orientation entail reciprocal in?uence. Becoming a parent and thecircumstances under which a man does so, and masculinity orientation, mayin?uence each other reciprocally (E). That is, having a biological child maymake a male feel more masculine, while simultaneously having a moretraditional masculinity orientation may promote higher fertility. Next, mas-culinity orientation can moderate the linkage between men’s parental statusand their parenting (F). For example, having a ?rst birth as a teen may beassociated with different kinds of fathering among males who hold moretraditional beliefs about masculinity than among males with less traditionalbeliefs. Finally, a father’s parenting may be in?uenced by his masculinityorientation and vice versa (G).FATHERHOOD,MASCULINITY, AND CHILD OUTCOMESFigure 2.2 adds child outcomes to the model. (Linkages not related to childoutcomes and already discussed in Figure 2.1 are shown with dotted lines butnot labeled.) A primary way that a father’s male gender status may in?uencehis child is by virtue of in?uencing his parental behavior, that is, an indirect ormediated effect (D, H). However, it is also possible that the child is directlyin?uenced by her father’s male gender (D3). In this linkage, being directlyThe Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 31 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 32in?uenced by fathers’ male gender status refers to the direct consequences ofliving with or having frequent contact with a parent who has male genderstatus, that is, a father. In the social context that so many children do not livewith a father, or do not have a relationship with their nonresident father,simply having a father with whom one lives or has a relationship can have asigni?cant meaning to the child and to those around her, in?uencing herbehavior as a result. The linkage between paternal male gender status andchild outcomes (D3) is shown as bidirectional because the child’s behaviorcould in?uence whether the father lives with her or how much contact he haswith her; for example, in the presence of other factors promoting fatherabsence, a child’s acting out could tip the balance toward absence. Anotherform potentially taken by the D3 linkage is that having a resident parent whois male could have a direct modeling effect on sons’ sex-typed behavior.Finally, the father’s male gender may function as a moderator of the child’sperceptions of her father’s parenting; that is, the same parental behavior maybe perceived differently by the child depending on the parent’s gender (D2).For example, discipline on the part of fathers may have stronger effects thanwhen mothers show the same behavior.While fathers’ parenting in?uences the child, there is also potential recip-rocal in?uence (H). Father involvement research is beginning to shift awayfrom conceptualizing paternal involvement as behavior that fathers in effect‘‘dispense’’ to their children, toward viewing it as an inherently relationalprocess between father and child embedded in a broader pattern of familyinteraction (see chapter 3). Further, paternal male gender status may moder-ate the in?uence of this reciprocal in?uence of child on father (D2). Forexample, if a child has a high level of interest in sports, fathers may increasetheir engagement in sports-promoting behaviors more than mothers do.These patterns of linkages raise the possibility that fathers’ male genderstatus may have evocative effects: fathers’ maleness may in?uence theirParental statuschild presence, #, spacing,biological and/or socialParentingPaternal malegender statusPaternalmasculinityorientationChild outcomesDD2D3HGG2G3Denotes amoderator effectFigure 2.2 Fatherhood, Masculinity, and Child Outcomes.Note: For labeling of linkages involving parental status, see Figure 2.1.32 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 33behavior with their child (D), in turn affecting their child (H), as well asin?uence their child directly (D3); their child’s behavior in response mayreinforce those paternal behaviors (H).Fathers’ masculinity orientation can also have a direct in?uence on theirparenting (G). More masculine fathers may parent in different ways, andthink about themselves differently as fathers, than less masculine fathers. I naddition, masculinity orientation can d irectly in?uence the child, for exam-ple, sons’ direct modeling of their fathers’ levels or forms of masculinit yorientation (G3). Fathers’ masculinityorientationmayalsohaveanindirectin?uence mediated by fathers’ parenting behavior (G, H). Further, mascu-linity orientation potentially moderates the in?uence of fathers’ parentingon the child, in that the same paternal behavior or identity may be experi-enced differently by the child, depending on how masculine she per ceivesher father to be (G2). In the reciprocal direction, children’s behavior canin?uence fathers’ masculinity orientations; for example, children’s gender-typed behavior can reinfor ce fathe rs’ gender- typed behavior (G3). Anotherpossible dynamic is that fathers ’ masculinity orienta tions moderate th ein?uence of children’s behavior on fathers; for example, a son excelling atfootball will have a different impact on fathers who hold the high valuationof male competence in football that is part of some North Americanconceptions of masculinity, than on fathers who do not (G2).FATHERHOOD,MASCULINITY,CHILD OUTCOMES, AND FATHER OUTCOMESFigure 2.3 depicts the ?nal linkages in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Modelinvolving parent outcomes in addition to child outcomes. (For simpli?cation,the linkages discussed in Figures 2.1 and 2.2 not concerning parent outcomesare omitted.) Possible parental outcomes include psychological well-being,life satisfaction, generativity, marital or relationship satisfaction, andPaternal malegender statusParental status ParentingChild outcomes PaternalmasculinityorientationParentoutcomes K1IK2K3K4ML1L2L3L4JDenotes amoderator effectFigure 2.3 Fatherhood, Masculinity, Child Outcomes, and Father Outcomes.The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 33 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 34socioeconomic status attainment (earnings, education). Parental status andthese outcomes can reciprocally in?uence each other (I); for example, earlychildbearing and low status attainment may affect each other mutually.Among parents, the association of parenting behavior and identity withparent outcomes may also be reciprocal (J); for example, being more involvedas a parent and psychological well-being may each promote the other.Bringing in gender status, paths K1 and K2 denote that the relationshipbetween parental status and adult outcomes, and between parenting andadult outcomes, can differ for men and women. Among men, these linkagesare also moderated by masculinity orientation (L1, L2).Path K3 indicates that there are averagegender differencesin adult outcomes(e.g., men earn more than women). These adult outcomes and children’soutcomes may in?uence each other; for example, parental psychologicaldistress and adolescent problem behaviors can have a reciprocal relationship(M). This linkage may potentially be weaker, or stronger, among fathers thanamong mothers (K4). In parallel, among men, reciprocal in?uence may existbetween masculinity orientation and fathers’ adult outcomes (L3); for example,masculinity attitudes and relationship satisfaction may be interrelated (Pleck etal., 1993b). Masculinity orientation may also affect the extent to which parents’outcomes and children’s outcomes are interconnected (L4).In summary, the broad set of potential linkages between fatherhood andmasculinity identi?ed in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model provides thestructure for a comprehensive research program on their interrelationship.The model also establishes a broader context in which to consider the notionthat fathers make an essential and unique contribution to child developmentby virtue of their masculinity, to which we now turn.THE ESSENTIAL FATHER HYPOTHESIS IN THE CONTEXTOF THE FATHERHOOD–MASCULINITY MODELThe idea that fathers, by virtue of being male, make an essential and uniquecontribution to child development has existed in the social sciences since atleast the 1940s (Pleck, 1981). This notion is clearly established in contem-porary public discourse about fathers: At the time of this writing, an Internetsearch on ‘‘fathers’’ and ‘‘essential’’ jointly yielded 5.35 million pages; search-ing on ‘‘fathers’’ and ‘‘unique’’ produced 4.97 million pages. Blankenhorn(1995) and Popenoe (1996) provide the most concerted recent formulations ofthis thesis. As Silverstein and Auerbach (1999, p. 197) summarize this notionin their critical analysis, ‘‘Fathers are understood as having a unique andessential role to play in child development, especially for boys who need amale role model to establish a masculine gender identity.’’In my view, this ‘‘essential father’’ (EF) hypothesis can be formulated at abroad level as a sequence of three linked ideas. First, fathers make acontribution to children’s development that is essential. Second, fathersmake a contribution that is unique; what makes fathers’ contribution essentialis precisely that it is unique. Third, fathers make a contribution that is uniquelymale and uniquely masculine; that is, fathers’ contribution is unique speci?callybecause fathers are males and have masculine characteristics.34 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 35It is useful to analyze where the EF hypothesis ‘‘?ts’’ within the network ofpotential connections depicted in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model. Doingso makes evident, ?rst, that there are many possible associations betweenfatherhood and masculinity not addressed in the hypothesis. The essentialitythesis concerns only those fatherhood–masculinity linkages connected tochild outcomes (Figure 2.2). In particular, the EF hypothesis does not addresspotentially important connections concerning the interrelation betweenmen’s parental status and their fathering behavior (Figure 2.1) and amongfatherhood, masculinity, and fathers’ adult outcomes (Figure 2.3) analyzed inother parts of the model.Second, the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model’s Figure 2.2 makes it possibleto specify systematically the possible processes involved in fathers’ poten-tially essential, unique, masculine contribution to child development. Oneprimary pathway of possible in?uence is that being male may be associatedwith distinctive parenting behaviors (path D in Figure 2), which in turn affectthe child’s development (H). In addition, the same parental behavior mayhave distinctive effects on the child when exhibited by fathers compared tomothers (the moderator effect on path H denoted by path D2). Simply havinga resident father or having signi?cant contact with a nonresident one couldalso have a direct effect (D3). Finally, variations among fathers in theirmasculinity orientation may also play a role, in that fathers’ having moremasculine behaviors or attitudes may in?uence child outcomes, in particular,children’s sex typing, directly (path G3), indirectly via effects on paternalbehavior (G,H), and via moderating the in?uence of paternal behavior on thechild (G2). It is important to note that for the direct linkages involved in the EFhypothesis (D, H, D3, G, G3), the hypothesis assumes that in?uence isunidirectional, whereas in the broader model all but one of these paths(D) are considered bidirectional.AREAS OF RESEARCH RELEVANT TO THE ESSENTIAL FATHER HYPOTHESISResearch is available concerning many but not all of these possible pathwaysof in?uence. Six areas of research are most relevant: The ?rst concerns genderdifferences in parenting behavior. Next considered are three topics regardingthe effects of father presence (coresidence) vs. absence: the associationbetween father presence and positive child outcomes, the mediating roleof paternal involvement in this association, and the extent to which the effectsof paternal presence can be attributed speci?cally to fathers’ male gender.Next considered is the uniqueness of fathering’s effects, relative to the effectsof mothering. The ?nal area reviewed is the association of paternal mascu-linity orientation to fathers’ parenting and to child outcomes.1. Gender Differences in Parenting The most well-established difference inparenting by parental gender is that fathers on average spend less total timewith their children than mothers do (Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). This genderdifference, however, does not have clear implications for the essential fatherhypothesis one way or the other. Although fathers’ lower engagement timecould mean that fathers’ contribution to development is smaller thanThe Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 35 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 36mothers’, it could alternatively create a context in which fathers’ behaviorshave a disproportionately high impact on the child.The aspect of gender differences in parenting central to the EF hypothesisis, instead, differences in the nature of fathers’ and mothers’ parental behav-ior. Reviews of this literature conclude that signi?cant average differences doexist on many dimensions of parenting (Collins & Russell, 1991; Leaper,Anderson, & Sanders, 1998). And many fathers clearly view their parentalbehavior as different from mothers’. As Doucet (2006) observed in a recentqualitative study, ‘‘It is as though fathers look across [the] metaphoricalgender divide to what women are doing and then co-construct their ownactions in relation, sometimes in reaction, to those maternal decisions andmovements’’ (p. 220).However, three important quali?cations are required about average gen-der differences in parenting: average differences by parental gender are notlarge, within-gender variation is substantial, and as a result the overlap infathers’ and mothers’ distributions on parenting variables is considerable. AsCollins and Russell (1991, p. 109) put it,Differences in mother–child and father–child interactions . . . do not appear tobe as marked as most theories imply. [For example,] observation studies inmiddle childhood show that many fathers were highly nurturant (e.g., bydemonstrating affection) and typically participated in caregiving as frequentlyas mothers did, wh en both parents were present. Further, self-report studies inadolescence show that mothers are equally as likely as fathers to discuss schoolperformance and future career goals.Leaper et al.’s (1998) meta-analysis of parental gender differences inparents’ use of language with their children is especially useful because itgoes beyond simply reporting whether average differences are statisticallysigni?cant or not, but also provides estimates of effect sizes for variousdimensions of parental speech. Effect size refers to expressing the differencesfound between mothers’ and fathers’ means in standard deviation units (d).Across studies, mothers tended to talk more (d ¼ 0.26), use more supportive(d ¼ 0.23) and negative (d ¼ 0.13) speech, and use less directive (d ¼ 0.19) andinforming (d ¼ .15) speech than did fathers. According to standard criteria forinterpreting effect sizes (>0.8 for large effects, >0.5 for medium effects, >0.2for small effects, and effects < 0.2 considered negligible; Rosenthal, Rosnow,& Rubin, 2000), only two of the ?ve domains meet the criterion to beconsidered even small effects. These low effect sizes imply that overlapbetween fathers and mothers is substantial. For example, according to thenormal curve, the effect size of 0.23 for supportive speech in mothers’ favormeans that 41% of fathers nonetheless show more supportive speech thandoes the average mother. Overlap would be considerable even if effect sizeswere substantially higher: for example, if d ¼ 0.5, 31% of fathers would showgreater support than the maternal average, and if d ¼ 0.8, 21% of fatherswould be more supportive.The average gender difference in parenting receiving most attention isfathers’ greater engagement in play. Paquette (2004) proposed a well-known36 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 37theory of the ‘‘father–child activation relationship’’ as the unique essence offathering, elaborating on this difference. However, other researchers whohave investigated parental play note thatdespite the differences in typ ical play style, there is also considerable over lapin how fathers and mothers play with infants and children . . . [M]ost typesof parent–infant play occur with both fathers and mothers and with similaramounts of affection, object play, physical play, and conventional play interac-tion. . . . [F]athers’ play varies from quiet didactic or pretend play with toysto rowdy rambunctious physical play. Paquette is correct that fathers tend toengage in more physical idiosyncratic play, but that is not the only way theyplay or the only way they contribute to their children’s development (Roggman,2004, p. 2004; see also Tamis-LeMonda, 2004).Pleck and Masciadrelli’s (2004, Table 3) retabulation of time diary dataabout parental time from the 1997 Child Development Supplement (CDS;Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001) of the Panel Study of IncomeDynamics provides additional insight into parental gender differences inplay. Yeung et al. provide data about the somewhat broader category of‘‘play/companionship’’ as well as caregiving and teaching activities. Reta-bulating these data, play/companionship was the single largest componentof fathers’ engagement, 35% of their total engagement time (though it was notthe majority of fathers’ engagement since it was less than 50%). And fathers’play proportion was higher than mothers’ (29%). Nonetheless, it was note-worthy that play was also the largest single component of mothers’ engage-ment, higher than the proportion of their time in caregiving (22%). Becausemothers spent more total engagement time than fathers with their children,mothers’ absolute amount of time in play was actually slightly higher thanfathers’ (0.79 vs. 0.69 hours/day). With children aged 9–12, play was again thelargest component of both fathers’ and mothers’ time; for children of this age,fathers’ absolute level of play time was higher than mothers, but onlymarginally so (0.57 vs. 0.52 hours/day).It is possible that parental gender differences in behavior are more markedwhen one examines parental behavior with boys and parental behavior withgirls separately. However, Lytton and Romney’s (1991) review of differencesin parental socialization by gender concluded that of 19 socialization areas,North American fathers (and mothers) differentially behave toward sons anddaughters in only one: encouragement of sex-typed activities. In a subsequentreview of the extent to which mother–son, mother–daughter, father–son, andfather–daughter relationships are distinct, Russell and Saebel (1997) con-cluded that ‘‘the literature that was surveyed contained many claims andassumptions about the distinctness of relationships in the four dyads, but theempirical evidence in support of these claims and assumptions was limited’’(p. 111).A reasonable conclusion is that average differences by gender do exist in atleast some dimensions of parental behavior. However, when found, thesedifferences are not large in magnitude, and the overlap between fathers’ andmothers’ distributions is sizeable. The pattern of results suggests that if the EFThe Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 37 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:54 Page 38hypothesis is valid, it is less likely to operate via fathers’ showing a uniquerepertory of parental behaviors, and more likely to operate via the parentalbehaviors shared in common by fathers and mothers having distinctiveeffects when exhibited by fathers. The later subsection on the uniquenessof fathering’s effects evaluates the relevant evidence.2. Associations Between Father Presence and Child Outcomes Reviewed here isresearch comparing outcomes in children, adolescents, and adults who grewup in a two-parent family, including a father and mother for all of theirchildhood and adolescence (hereafter referred to as father presence), and thosegrowing up with a single mother for at least some period during childhoodand adolescence (father absence). Amato and Dorius (chapter 6) and Amatoand Gilbreth (1999; see also chapter 7) discuss studies focusing on the effectsof nonresident fathers’ level of involvement on child outcomes.Both father absence and father presence occur in varying contexts (e.g.,divorce vs. never-married father absence; biological vs. stepfather presence),although in making comparisons between father presence and absence, muchresearch aggregates across these contexts. Nonetheless, the evidence isincontrovertible that there is a simple bivariate association between growingup in a two-parent family including a father and mother during childhoodand adolescence and numerous positive later outcomes (McLanahan &Sandefur, 1994; Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2004). For example, in bivariateanalysis with no controls using a national survey, 14% percent of those raisedby single mothers lived below the poverty line as adults, compared to 7% ofthose raised by two biological parents (Lang & Zagorsky, 2001). While themajority of children raised by single mothers were not poor as adults, thedifference in poverty rates between the two groups is substantial.What is controversial is exactly why these bivariate associations occur andwhat they mean. The ?rst matter to be addressed is that families with andwithout resident fathers differ in many sociodemographic background char-acteristics such as race–ethnicity and socioeconomic status that are alsoassociated with child outcomes. In addition, since divorce and separationare a common context for paternal nonresidence, families without residentfathers may have differed from families with resident fathers in level ofparental con?ict prior to the divorce or separation, another factor related tochild outcomes. These background characteristics are thus ‘‘selection factors’’potentially accounting for the observed differences in children’s outcomes.Thus, at issue is whether father presence and child outcomes have anindependent association, an association that persists net of selection, that is,when differences in prior background are taken into account.In a review of research using a variety of methods to address selection(statistical control, longitudinal analysis with predisruption measures ofoutcomes, sibling models, incorporating state-level divorce policies as con-textual variables), Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan (2004) conclude that whenselection is taken into account, associations between father presence and childoutcomes ‘‘become smaller, sometimes statistically insigni?cant’’ (p. 127).Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, and Bremberg’s (2008) recent review oflongitudinal studies of the effects of fathering on child development offers38 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 39illustrations. This review included four studies of father presence–absencethat controlled for socioeconomic background. Crockett, Eggebeen, andHawkins (1993), using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY1979) reported no effects on cognitive development. Vaden-Kiernan, Ialongo,Pearson, & Kellam (1995) found that ?rst-grade father presence predicted lowaggression in fourth to sixth grade among boys only, as reported by teachersbut not parents. Sarkadi summarizes Flouri and Buchanan’s (2002) analysis ofthe U.K. National Child Development Study as ?nding effects of fatherabsence at age 7 on trouble with the police at age 16 for girls, but the outcomesin that publication are actually age 16 relationship quality with parents andage 33 partner relationship quality, with early father absence exerting in?u-ence only on the former; Flouri’s (2005, p. 105) monograph does include thestated ?nding, however.Sarkadi et al. desc ribe the fourth study, Carlson (2006), a s providing thestrongest evidence for the bene?cial in?uence of father presenc e, yielding‘‘general po sitive effects.’’ However, a careful review of the report suggeststhat the results are more mixed. This investigation used later data from theNLSY 197 9 dataset analyzed by Crockett et al. (1993) to compare childrenlivingwithcontinuouslymarriedparentstochildreninseveralcontextsinwhich the child lives away from her biological father, of which two are o fparticular interest here: living with a divorced single mother, and livingwith a never-married single mother. With no controls, both father-absentgroups fare signi?cantly worse on all four outcomes studied (externalizing,delinquency, negative feelings, and internalizing), perhaps the ?nding onwhich Sarkadi et al. b ased their conclusion. With socioec onomic status(SES) and other controls, however, differences involving children of divo-rced single mothers became only marginally signi?cant (p < 0.10) for threeof the four outcomes; f or the outcome s till signi?cant, negative feelings, d ¼0.14 (the effect size was 0.14 of a standa rd de viation). Differences involv-ing children of never-married single mothers became nonsigni?cant fortwo of t he four outco mes; for the outcomes remainin g signi?ca nt, delin-quency and negative feel ings, effect sizes were d ¼ 0.25 and 0.14. Usingstandard c riteria for inter preti ng effect sizes (Rosenthal et al., 2000), only theeffect for delinquency among chil dren of never-married mothers meets the0.20 threshold for being considered a nonnegligible effect, albeit only asmall one.In the studies attempting to address selection, Sigle-Rushton and McLa-nahan (2004) note that it is dif?cult to rule out the possibility that selectionfactors that the researchers did not observe could account for the differencesthat remain. These authors also note that it is potentially problematic thatchildren with a cohabiting stepfather fare worse than children with twomarried parents, since both kinds of families have fathers present. However,cohabiting stepfathers may be less involved (Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, &Osborne, 2008). It could be argued that without marriage, cohabiting step-fathers have lesser authority and involvement. Carlson’s study, however,?nds that children with married stepfathers show more externalizing behav-iors and more negative self-feelings than children with continuously marriedparents, with SES and mothering controlled.The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 39 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 40Since paternal death is less subject to selection factors than overall paternalabsence (though not entirely free of selection), Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan(2004) suggest that perhaps the strongest evidence of the negative effects offather absence is the association of paternal death with more negative childoutcomes. However, these effects are weak (Lang & Zagorsky, 2001); inaddition, the question arises whether the effect observed is uniquely con-nected to the dynamics involved in loss of a parent through death as opposedto paternal absence more generally. In addition, they note that the weakevidence from paternal death is mitigated by ?ndings that children withresident cohabiting fathers can be as disadvantaged as children with singlemothers. Balancing all this evidence together, Sigle-Rushton and McLanahansuggest that ‘‘selection appears to account for some but not all of thedifference in child outcomes’’ (p. 129).In summary, independent associations between father presence and childoutcomes are less consistent and smaller in magnitude than are they aresometimes represented (e.g., National Fatherhood Initiative, 2007). Nonethe-less, in some studies, being raised with a father present is associated withsome positive child outcomes to some degree, net of selection. In addition, theeffects of father presence appear to be contextualized; that is, they varyaccording to parents’ marital status and according to fathers’ biological orstep relationship to the child. Some subgroups of father-present childrenshow no better outcomes than father-absent children, suggesting that havinga resident male parent per se does not have an overall effect. Thus, theevidence provides only quali?ed and limited support for the effects ofpaternal presence entailed by the essentiality perspective.3. Mediation of the Association Between Father Presence and Child Outcomes byPaternal Behaviors The EF hypothesis implies not just that father presence isassociated with positive outcomes net of selection; it also requires that fathers’involvement behaviors mediate the linkage between father presence andchild outcomes. That is, data need to show that father presence promoteschild outcomes because presence is linked to how fathers behave as parents,which in turn in?uences child outcomes. A ?rst issue to address is that thelink between father presence and child outcomes has other possible media-tors besides fathers’ parenting. A particularly important example is lowfamily income. In addition to being a selection factor for father absence(both marital disruption and unmarried parenthood), low income can alsofunction as a mediator of the effects of father absence: As a result of absence ofa father, the child’s family has lower income and fewer of the resources thatincome provides. Another possible mediator is mothers’ behavior. Fatherpresence potentially has positive effects on her parenting that could promotegood child outcomes. (For further analysis of fathering’s indirect effects viamothers, see chapter 5.)The existence of these other possible mediators of the link between fatherpresence and child outcomes implies that to assess the role of paternalbehavior as a mediator, these other mediational processes need to be con-trolled for, since they are not part of the EF hypothesis. The statement that‘‘fathers make an essential contribution to child development’’ is not usually40 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 41understood to mean ‘‘because their earnings provide greater family incomethan would be the case without a father’’ or ‘‘because they promote mothers’parenting.’’ Rather, the hypothesis of paternal essentiality connotes thatfathers make a unique contribution to development speci?cally because ofhow they themselves act as parents. These other possible mediator effectsthus need to be controlled by including family income and mothers’ parent-ing as predictors. If they are not controlled, the mediational role of fathers’parenting may be overestimated.Carlson’s (2006) study discussed earlier using the NLSY 1979 providesperhaps the best available analysis concerning the extent to which the effectsof father presence are mediated speci?cally by fathers’ level of involvement.Although nonresident biological fathers are less involved with their childrenon average than are resident biological fathers, there is suf?cient variationwithin each group and suf?cient overlap between the groups to test thispossible mediation. Carlson’s analysis tested this mediation in two ways. Themost important comparisons contrast the children of continuously marriedparents to children living with a divorced single mother, and to childrenliving with a never-married single mother. As noted earlier, with no back-ground variables controlled, both father-absent group show signi?cantlypoorer scores on the outcomes examined: internalizing behavior, delin-quency, negative feelings, and internalizing behavior. When level of fatherinvolvement is controlled, all effects become nonsigni?cant (Carlson’s model2 vs. model 1), meeting the key formal test for mediation: an initiallysigni?cant effect becoming nonsigni?cant when the mediator is added tothe model. This initial analysis suggests that the effects of father presence arefully mediated by level of father involvement.However, the more rigorous test of mediation includes controls for familyincome and other background factors (her model 5 vs. 4). As discussed above,these controls are necessary to at least partially take selection effects intoaccount. But to evaluate paternal involvement as a mediator, controlling forfamily income is even more important because doing so also takes into accountthis variable’s possible mediator role, yielding a more precise estimate of themediational effects speci?cally of paternal parenting. In the models with thesecontrols, Carlson notes that all the coef?cients representing effects of fatherpresence on outcomes are lower when father involvement is included in themodels than when it is not. However, the formal test for mediation (a signi-?cant effect becoming nonsigni?cant when the mediator is added) is met foronly one of the outcomes, negative feelings, albeit for both father-absentgroups. For another outcome, delinquency in children of unmarried mothers,mediation is clearly discon?rmed, as this group continues to show signi?-cantly more delinquent behavior than children of continuously marriedparents after level of paternal involvement is controlled.Thus, the more stringent test of mediation con?rms mediation of theassociation between father presence and child outcomes for only one offour outcomes studied. Altogether, when other possible mediational effectsare taken into account, there is only limited research con?rmation that theeffects of paternal presence on child outcomes are mediated speci?cally byfathers’ paternal involvement.The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 41 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 424. Attributing Paternal Presence Effects to Fathers’ Male Gender To the extentthat paternal presence promotes positive child outcomes, and that theseeffects are mediated by paternal behaviors, a ?nal issue about paternalpresence effects needs to be addressed. Can these effects be attributed tofathers being male? The question may sound odd, but arises in the followingway. In their critical analysis of the EF hypothesis, Silverstein and Auerbach(1999) noted an important confound in the traditional comparison of father-present two-parent families and single-mother-headed families. In this com-parison, two effects are mixed together: the effect of being raised by a father ornot, and the effect of being reared by two parents or one parent. Any pooreroutcomes in children raised by single mothers could therefore result eitherfrom not having a male parent, or from being raised by only one parentinstead of two.To elucidate the effects of having a male parent or not, comparisons areneeded between pairs of family structures that hold constant the number ofparents, but vary in whether they include a male parent. Several suchcomparisons are possible: single fathers and single mothers; two-parentlesbian families and two-parent gay male families; and two-parent hetero-sexual families and two-parent lesbian families. Of these three possiblecomparisons, the largest body of research is available for the third. Theseinvestigations provide little support for the notion that children of two lesbianparents show poorer developmental outcomes than do children in two-parentheterosexual families (see reviews in Patterson & Chan, 1999; Stacey &Biblarz, 2001; see also chapter 11). An important limitation of this body ofresearch is the widespread use of convenience samples. These samples makeit dif?cult to rule out the possibility that the absence of differences mightresult from lesbian families whose children function better being more likelyto volunteer for research, particularly if it is evident to potential participantsthat the project concerns lesbian families.However, this line of research includes one set of studies (Wainright,Russell, & Patterson, 2004; Wainright & Patterson, 2006, 2008) with a samplethat was particularly rigorously drawn, the large-scale representative sampleof adolescents and their families in the National Longitudinal Survey ofAdolescent Health (Add Health). A subset of 44 families in the surveyincluded two parents, both female, who identi?ed themselves as being ina marriage-like relationship. A comparison subsample of 44 families with twomarried heterosexual parents was selected, matched on the target adoles-cent’s and parents’ other characteristics. The two groups of adolescents werethen compared on self-esteem, anxiety, depression, grade point average,trouble in school, school connectedness, autonomy, and neighborhood inte-gration, with inclusion of other predictors of these outcomes to increase thestatistical power of the comparisons by family structure. No signi?cantdifferences were observed between the two groups of adolescents, withthe exception that children of two lesbian parents reported higher neighbor-hood integration (Wainright, Russell, & Patterson). Subsequent analysesfocusing on peer relations, substance use, and delinquency likewise foundno differences (Wainright & Patterson, 2006, 2008).42 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 43Altogether, this evidence suggests that in the differences found in fatherabsence research between two-parent mother-father families and single-mother families are likely due to the former including two parents ratherthan due to their including a male parent. This suggests that the effects offather presence in two-parent heterosexual families should not be attributedto the fathers’ maleness, contrary to the EF hypothesis.5. The Uniqueness of Fathering’s Effects To consider the uniqueness of pater-nal contributions to development, we now shift attention away fromresearch on the effects of father pr esence vs. absence on child outcomes,to research on the in?uence of var iations in fathering behavior amongchildren of resi dent fathers. The in?uen ce of father involvement on childrenis perhaps the single most frequently studied topic in the fatherhood ?eld,and has been investigated with increa singly advanced statistical method-ologies. The more rigorous the research, the fewer effects are found. None-theless, the most sophisticated rec ent studies provide some evidence ofdirect caus al in?uences on children’s development (see chapter 3). Thissection focuses on just one methodological issue in this research that hassubstantive implications for the EF hypothesis: the extent to which theeffects of fathering are independent of the effects of mothering. So that thisissue ca n be consider ed in depth, the discussion here does not tak e intoaccount other methodological concerns such as selection and the possiblereciprocal in?uence of child outcomes on paternal involvement (see reviewin chapter 3).The need to take maternal in?uences into account in research on paternalin?uences on development is now well recognized (Amato & Rivera, 1999;Pleck, 1997; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004). The reason is that fathering andmothering variables are usually relatively strongly positively correlated witheach other. For example, levels of paternal and maternal involvement arepositively associated, even when child age and gender as well as parentalbackground characteristics are controlled (Aldous, Mulligan & Bjarnason,1998; Amato & Rivera, 1999; Harris & Ryan, 2004; Ishii-Kuntz & Coltrane,1992; Pleck & Hofferth, 2008). The quality of fathers’ and mothers’ relation-ships with their child (King & Sobolewski, 2006) and their parental styles(Martin, Ryan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2007; Simons & Conger, 2007; Tamis-LeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, & Lamb, 2004; Winsler, Madigan, & Aquilino,2005) are also correlated.Thus, if mothering is not controlle d, when links are found betweenfathering and c hild outcomes, it is possible that only mothering in?uenceschild outcomes, and fathering appears to be linked to o utcomes onlybecause it is correlated with mothering. T hose effects would be attributedto fathering in the model because mothering is not included as a predictor.By adding mothering variables, however, one can assess whether fatheringhas an ‘‘independent’’ effect, that is, independent of the effect of mothering.Framed another way, the analysis can determine whether fath eringaccounts for ‘‘unique variance’’ in child o utcomes beyond that explainedby mothering.The Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 43 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 44When proponents of the EF hypothesis assert that fathers’ contributions tochild development are unique, however, they use this term in a sense that goesbeyond the statistical meaning. Fathers’ in?uence also has to be distinct frommothers’ in the sense of not being substitutable or replaceable by mothers’.That is, it must be the case that for children whose fathers do not provide aparticular in?uence, mothers’ providing it will not have the same effect. Thepaternal essentiality hypothesis thus implies that paternal in?uences areunique not only in the sense of statistical independence, but also in the senseof nonsubstitutability.The difference between these two senses of uniqueness can be illustrated inresearch on the consequences of fathering on child outcomes that takesmothering into account. For example, in the ethnically diverse National EarlyHead Start Evaluation, Tamis-LeMonda and colleagues (2004) analyzed thelink between observational composite measures of supportive parenting(sensitivity, positive regard), and cognitive stimulation at 24 months withthe Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI) and the Peabody PictureVocabulary Test (PPVT) at 36 months, with paternal and maternal socio-demographics controlled. Fathers’ supportive parenting had effects on theseoutcomes independent of mothers’. This study also reports the uniquevariances explained. Fathers’ supportive parenting uniquely predicted 7%of the variance in the MDI, and 8% in the PPVT, compared with 13% and 10%uniquely explained by mothers’ supportive parenting.Another analysis of these data conducted by Ryan, Martin, and Brooks-Gunn (2006) addresses whether the effects of fathering are also unique in thesecond sense, not being substitutable or replaceable by the effects of mother-ing. Ryan et al. classi?ed fathers and mothers as supportive or nonsupportivebased on a median split on the supportiveness variable for both genderscombined. Children’s average MDI scores at 36 months were then presentedgraphically for four parenting combinations (exact means not given): A: bothfather and mother supportive, about 95; B: unsupportive father, supportivemother, about 90; C: supportive father, unsupportive mother, about 90; andD: both parents unsupportive, about 85.Uniqueness in the sense of statistical independence is illustrated by thecomparisons between groups A and B, and between groups C and D. The Avs. B comparison shows the effect of father supportiveness with the level ofmother supportiveness held constant (in this case, high), as does C vs. D(maternal supportiveness constant at low). Both comparisons suggest thatwith mother supportiveness controlled, father supportiveness is associatedwith about a ?ve-point increment in MDI.However, the extent to which the effects of paternal and maternal sup-portiveness are replaceable by each other is indicated by the comparison ofgroups B and C. Here, the effect of having only a supportive father and theeffect of having only a supportive mother appear to be interchangeable, eachmaking about a ?ve-point difference. If fathers do not provide support,mothers’ provision of support has the same effect on child outcomes. Overall,the study ?nds that it is better to have two supportive parents than only one,but if a child has only one, the effects of father supportiveness and mothersupportiveness are equivalent. Martin, Ryan, and Brooks-Gunn’s (2007)44 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 45analysis of later outcomes at age 5 replicated these results, leading the authorsto conclude that ‘‘among children with one supportive parent, the sex of thatparent was inconsequential’’ (p. 423).Overall, the preponderance of evidence indicates that fathers’ behaviorshave effects on child outcomes that are statistically independent of mothers’,and account for unique variance beyond that explained by mothers’ behav-iors (although a minority of studies do ?nd only maternal in?uences).However, these father effects appear to be equivalent to and interchangeablewith those of mothers, rather than being completely distinct from them. Thus,current research does not support the notion that fathers have unique,nonsubstitutable effects on child outcomes in the sense implied by the EFhypothesis.6. In?uence of Paternal Masculinity Orientation on Fathering and on Child Out-comes A ?nal implication of the EF hypothesis concerns the in?uence offathers’ masculinity orientation on their parenting and on child outcomes. Asindicated in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model, gender orientation can beoperationalized either as gender-typed personality characteristics (with cur-rent measures yielding separate scores for masculinity [M] and femininity[F]), or as attitudes about masculinity. We consider here the associations offather involvement to both aspects of masculinity, and then the links of childoutcomes to both.Several cross-sectional comparisons ?nd that involved fathers are morelikely to be androgynous, that is, high in both M and F (Palkovitz, 1984;Rosenwasser & Patterson, 1984–1985; Sanderson & Sanders-Thompson, 2002),or in F (Russell, 1983, 1986). However, other cross-sectional studies ?nd noassociations (DeFrain, 1979; Lamb, Frodi, Hwang, & Frodi, 1982; Levant,Slattery, & Loiselle, 1987; Radin, 1994). Longitudinal studies also yield mixedresults (Grossman, Pollack, & Golding, 1988; Kurdeck, 1998; Radin, 1994).Research operationalizing masculinity as beliefs about what men shouldbe like have not found it related to involvement (Barnett & Baruch, 1987;Bonney, Kelley, & Levant, 1999). Many more studies have examined the linkbetween fathering and broader attitudes about gender egalitarianism, withmixed results (for detailed review, see Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004).Turning to in?uences of masculinity on child outcomes, Mussen’s (1961;Mussen & Rutherford, 1963) older research focused on masculinity as gender-typed personality characteristics. In Mussen’s studies, consistent with themodels of gender socialization of his time, parents were regarded as theprimary if not sole in?uence on development, and among males, highmasculinity was interpreted as an indicator of positive adjustment (Pleck,1981). In these analyses, paternal masculinity was unrelated to sons’ adoles-cent adjustment, or even to sons’ masculinity.In contemporary investigations, siblings, peers, other adults, and media areregarded as additional potential in?uences on development that need to beassessed and taken into account in evaluating parental in?uence. Thesein?uences can be interrelated in complex ways. For example, in Katz andKsansnak’s (1994) cross-sectional analysis of gender socialization in?uencesin 9- to 17-year-olds found that children’s perceptions of parents’ genderThe Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 45 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 46atraditionality (both fathers’ and mothers’) loaded on the same socializationfactor as same-sex friends’ gender atraditionality (labeled social environment?exibility). However, children’s desired similarity to their opposite-sex par-ent was part of a different factor (termed cross-sex socialization in?uence), onwhich desired similarity to opposite-sex grandparent, teachers, and mediacharacters also loaded. In boys as well as girls, both socialization factorspredicted a measure of self-?exibility in gender orientation, and the ?rstpredicted tolerance of gender atraditionality in others. But since both social-ization factors incorporated nonparental as well as parental in?uences, andthe parental in?uences included both mothers and fathers, the study did notprovide evidence of a unique effect of fathers’ masculinity orientation onchildren’s gender outcomes.A more recent example is Crouter, Whiteman, McHale, and Osgood’s(2007) longitudinal study using a cohort of children from ages 7 to 19,focusing on factors in?uencing trajectories of change in children’s genderattitudes. Fathers’ and mothers’ gender attitudes were correlated (r ¼ 0.42).Analyses revealed that boys with more traditional parents maintained quitetraditional attitudes across middle childhood and well into adolescence untilabout age 15, at which point their attitudes gradually became even moretraditional. In contrast, boys with less traditional parents demonstrated apronounced curvilinear pattern: initially highly traditional, becoming less so,and then becoming traditional again. Girls showed somewhat differentpatterns, and patterns for both boys and girls varied according to whetherthey were ?rst-borns or second-borns.These recent studies of associations between paternal masculinity orienta-tion and child outcomes suggest two conclusions. First, fathers’ and mothers’gender-typed characteristics, as well as their gender-related attitudes, may beempirically correlated both with each other and with gender socializationin?uences from other sources such as peers, other adults, and media. Theseintercorrelations do not rule out the possibility that paternal gender-typedcharacteristics or attitudes could have independent effects on children’sgender-related or other outcomes. However, these intercorrelations domake independent paternal effects less likely, and in any event indicatethat establishing independent effects for paternal gender orientation necessi-tates controlling for these other correlated gender socialization in?uences.Second, these results suggest that any effects observed for paternal mascu-linity are likely to be restricted to speci?c contexts de?ned by such factors asbirth order and child gender.In overview, the available research does not yield consistent con?rmationthe association between fathers’ masculinity orientation and their fatheringencompassed in the EF hypothesis. Likewise, in research on child outcomes,independent effects of paternal masculinity orientation that are generalizableacross contexts have not been documented.EVALUATING THE ESSENTIAL FATHER HYPOTHESISTo summarize the six areas of research relevant to the essential fatherhypothesis, ?rst, statistically signi?cant average differences by gender clearly46 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 47do exist for some dimensions of parental behavior. However, these differ-ences are not large in size, and the overlap between fathers’ and mothers’distributions is considerable. Second, being raised in a two-parent familyincluding a father (father presence) is associated with positive child outcomesto some degree net of selection factors, but these associations are lessconsistent and smaller in magnitude than they are sometimes represented.In addition, the strength of the paternal presence effect varies by context(fathers’ biological or step relationship to the child, marital status), with somesubgroups of father-present children showing no better outcomes than father-absent children, suggesting that having a resident male parent per se does nothave an effect across contexts. Third, there is only limited support for thenotion that fathers’ parental involvement behaviors are the speci?c mediatorof the relationship between paternal presence and good child outcomes.Fourth, comparisons between children reared in two-parent families withmale and female parents and children raised in two-parent families with twolesbian parents fails to ?nd differences favoring the former. Thus, the limitedeffects of father presence in two-parent compared to single-mother familiescannot be attributed to the father’s being male, as opposed to being a secondparent. Fifth, in research in which paternal and maternal in?uences areinvestigated simultaneously, there is evidence that fathers’ behaviors haveeffects on child outcomes that are statistically independent of mothering, andaccount for unique variance beyond that explained by mothers’ behaviors.However, these effects are equivalent and interchangeable with each other,rather than being distinctive in the sense of being nonsubstitutable. Sixth, theobserved associations of fathers’ gender-typed personality characteristics andgender-related attitudes to fathers’ parenting and child outcomes are in-consistent and not generalizable across varying contexts.In reviewing research in any area, ‘‘absence of evidence is not evidence ofabsence.’’ New research could yield more substantiation for paternal essen-tiality than exists currently. With this caveat in mind, the most reasonableconclusion from a review of the research available in these six areas isnonetheless that support for the paternal essentiality hypothesis is highlyquali?ed and modest at best.AN ALTERNATIVE FORMULATION:THE IMPORTANT FATHER HYPOTHESISIn broad terms, the EF hypothesis holds that fathers’ make a contribution tochild development that is essential, unique, and uniquely masculine. In myview, of all the de?ciencies in the research support for paternal essentiality,two are most critical. The ?rst failing is that the research concerning theuniqueness of fathering’s effects (?fth topic above) does not support thenotion that fathers make a contribution to development that is distinct frommothers, in the sense of fathers’ in?uence not being substitutable by mothers’.The second key weakness is that investigations attempting to link fathers’in?uence on development speci?cally with their masculinity orientationprovide little substantiation, as shown in research on the associations offathers’ masculinity orientation with child outcomes and with fathers’ parent-ing (sixth topic). Reinforcing both points, in research comparing childThe Essential Father Hypothesis in the Context of the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 47 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 48outcomes in two-parent heterosexual families with two-parent lesbian fami-lies (fourth topic), the effects of having a second parent besides the biologicalmother are not found to vary according to the second parent’s gender. Thus,current evidence does not support the notion that fathers’ in?uence on childdevelopment is a uniquely masculine one.I propose an alternative way to think about fathers’ contributions todevelopment that does not require problematic assumptions about essentialand uniquely masculine effects: good fathering makes an important contribu-tion to development. The response of some, even some other fatherhoodresearchers, to this material has been ‘‘so, you are saying that fathers make nodifference whatsoever’’—but there is a middle ground between fathers’ beingabsolutely essential, and their being completely irrelevant. The ‘‘paternalimportance’’ hypothesis is supported by ?ndings from some methodo-logically rigorous research that good fathering has signi?cant associationswith positive development that are statistically independent of the effects ofgood mothering and of other factors such as SES. These studies’ use of designsthat take into account possible selection effects and potential reciprocalin?uence help make the case that the associations found re?ect causal effects(see chapter 3).In this alternative hypothesis, good fathering is considered one of manyimportant in?uences on positive development. The fact that fathering is notall-determinative does not mean that it is irrelevant. Indeed, the paternalimportance hypothesis is consistent with the way that contemporaryresearchers think about in?uences on positive outcomes in most domains.Cardiovascular health provides a good example. Low cholesterol, normalblood pressure, diet, exercise, appropriate weight, and not smoking are allsigni?cant predictors of not having heart disease. Promoting every one ofthem is desirable. However, no single one of these factors is ‘‘essential’’ forcardiac health in a literal sense. (Many heart attack patients have normalcholesterol, or normal blood pressure, and so forth; some, in fact, have no riskfactors at all other than family history, gender, and age.) Rather, each variablerepresents a risk factor or supportive factor in heart health, statisticallyassociated with it, and with some evidence that modifying each improveshealth outcomes.To some, saying that fathers are important for positive child development,rather than saying that they are essential, is demotion in our assessment offathering’s effects. In my view, it simply represents bringing our under-standing of the impact of good fathering in line with the way researchersunderstand the effects of in?uences on positive outcomes in most otherdomains.OTHER LINKAGES IN THE FATHERHOOD–MASCULINITY MODEL:MASCULINITY DYNAMICS IN THE RELATION BETWEENFATHERHOOD AND GENERATIVITY AS AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLEThis chapter introduced the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model as an analyticalframework for the full range of their possible interrelationships. This broaderperspective makes evident that the potential linkages encompassed in the EF48 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 49hypothesis include only a small subset of the possible interconnectionsbetween fatherhood and masculinity. Once the EF hypothesis is ‘‘decentered’’as the sole focus of attention, one realizes that in a broader perspective,fatherhood–masculinity connections include the potential linkages of genderstatus and gender orientation to any parenting variable and child outcome.Fatherhood–masculinity relationships also include the possible moderatingeffects of gender status and gender orientation on associations between anypair of parenting constructs, and on linkages between any parenting variableand any other psychosocial construct. One example can be discussed here.In research on the consequences for men of being a father and of beinginvolved as a father, an important current direction focuses on effects onfathers’ psychosocial generativity (Masciadrelli & Pleck, 2003; Palkovitz,2002). Generativity is important because it is related to psychological well-being, both theoretically and empirically (e.g., Erikson, 1964; Peterson &Klohnen, 1995; Stewart, Ostrove, & Helson, 2001; Vaillant, 1977). Erikson (p.130) remarked, ‘‘Parenthood is, for most, the ?rst, and for many, the primegenerative encounter.’’ Three kinds of research potentially provide insightinto masculinity-related dynamics in?uencing how fatherhood promotes—ordoes not promote—generativity.One line of investigation concerns whether the link between generativityand parenthood differs for men and women (path K1 in Figure 2.3). Someresearch ?nds that being a parent is associated with aspects of generativityamong men but not women, at least using some measures (McAdams & de St.Aubin, (1992). However, other studies ?nd more consistent linkages amongwomen than among men (Peterson & Klohnen, 1995; Peterson & Stewart,1996). Also relevant is Snarey, Son, Kuehne, Hauser, & Vaillant’s (1987)observation that the circumstances of parenthood in?uenced the impact ofbeing a father on generativity. Initially infertile men who later became fathers(either through adoption or medical procedures allowing them to becomebirth fathers) were rated as exhibiting higher levels of societal generativitythan fertile, biological fathers. No parallel comparison is available for women.A second topic is how connections between parental behavior and gen-erativity compare for fathers and mothers (path K2). The most well-knownresearch documenting links between parenting behavior and generativityfocused on fathers (Snarey, 1993). With level of psychosocial developmentprior to parenthood and other factors controlled, positive paternal engage-ment, particularly supporting the child’s socioemotional development,explained 14% of the variance in men’s midlife generativity. Other studiesalso suggest that play and social involvement, but not routine caregiving, arelinked to generativity (Bailey, 1992; 1994; Christiansen & Palkovitz, 1998;McKeering & Pakenham, 2000). Two studies ?nd no parallel relationships formothers (Bailey, 1994; McKeering & Pakenham). In a third study with a largeAfrican-American subsample, parental role-modeling activities were associ-ated with generativity in both genders (Hart, McAdams, Hirsch, & Bauer,2001; see also Caldwell & White, 2006, on Black fathers’ generativity).A ?nal line of research concerns the association between generativity andparental identity. Two available studies yield inconsistent results. On the onehand, Christiansen and Palkovitz (1998) ?nd a strong association betweenOther Linkages in the Fatherhood–Masculinity Model 49 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 50fathers’ generativity and paternal identity operationalized as belief in theimportance of the role of the father for child development. In multivariateanalyses including pater nal identity, paternal behavior, and other potentialpredictors such as global psychosocial identity, paternal identity emergedas the strongest predictor of paternal generativity. On the other hand,however, McKeering and Pakenham (2000) observed no relationship be-tween societal generativity and parental identity in either gender in theirAustralian sample. No studies were located examining this associationamong mothers.Two opposing theoretical perspectives provide a standpoint from which tointerpret the complex pattern of similarities and differences by genderobserved in these three areas. According to one, because high involvementin parenting is less socially normative for men than women, when men do it,parenting has more in?uence on their generativity (cf. Maurer et al., 2001).The alternative view is that because parenting is more central to women’sidentities, variations in parental experience should have stronger associationswith generativity for them than for men. The extent to which either argumentholds true may, of course, vary according to what aspect of parenthood isexamined, and according to social context.Overall, research on fatherhood and generativity, framed in a genderperspective, provides one example of a fatherhood–masculinity linkageunrelated to the EF hypothesis worth further consideration. The role ofgender related dynamics in the connections between other psychosocialconstructs and parenting experience, and in the connections among parentingvariables, merit more investigation.IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICEThe following are perhaps the most important recommendations for futureresearch and practice to be derived from this chapter’s consideration ofmultifaceted linkages between fatherhood and masculinity.1. The essential father hypothesis has dominated discussion of the linkagesbetween fatherhood and masculinity. Only modest support is found forthis view of fathering’s essential, unique, masculine effects. Given thecentrality of paternal essentiality in the public understanding of father-hood, as well as the intrinsic importance of the issues involved, researchrelevant to the hypothesis clearly should and will continue. Scholarsshould pursue each of the six component lines of investigation identi?edhere, using new designs and analytical techniques. In addition, research-ers should also critically analyze this chapter’s conceptual formulation ofthe research implications of the notion that fathers’ contributions areessential. If subsequent work yields better formulations of what theconcept of paternal essentiality means, the chapter’s intent will havebeen realized, even if the conclusions drawn about paternal essentialitydiffer from those offered here.2. The Fatherhood–Masculinity Model identi?es numerous other intercon-nections between fatherhood and masculinity that have received far less50 FATHERHOOD AND MASCULINITY E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 51attention than the linkages encompassed in the EF hypothesis. Fathers’gender status and gender orientation potentially in?uence any parentingvariable. These aspects of fathers’ masculinity may also moderate therelationship between any pair of parenting constructs, and the relation-ship between any parenting variable and any other psychosocial con-cept. Opportunities abound for important new research.3. It is especially important that future research on fatherhood and mas-culinity employ more diverse samples. This includes addressing racial,ethnic, socioeconomic, and sexual orientation diversity, as well as givinggreater attention to other industrial societies and to developing countries(e.g., Chuang & Moreno, 2008; Connor & White, 2006; Klinth, 2008; otherchapters in this volume).4. For fatherhood practitioners, the chapter’s conclusions about the EFhypothesis present potential challenges. Many fathers ?nd the ideathat fathers’ contributions to child development are essential and uniquean inspirational and motivating one. In a cultural context in which fathers’contributions are often not socially valued as much as mothers’, for manyfathers this belief may be the only one available with which to construct anarrative justifying or explaining why they should be involved. And formany fatherhood practitioners themselves, the idea of paternal essential-ity may be central in providing a rationale for their work.It is important to recognize that what the t erm esse ntial means inpublic di scourse about fatherhood is not necessarily the same as itstraditional literal meaning. Indeed, its literal sense is shifting to signifyonly ‘‘important.’’ Although dictionaries de?ne essential as ‘‘indis-pensable; requisite: as in, water is essential to life’’ (Webster’s NewWorld Dictionary of the American Language, 196 2), Micr osoft Word’sthesaurus now includes importa nt as a possi ble synonym. In myexperience, the large majority of both fathers and fatherhood practi-tioners who use the term essentia l to characterize fathering’s effectsactually use this language to e xpress just that t hey think fathering is‘‘really important,’’ corresponding to the pate rnal importance hypoth-esis. To believe that fathering is essential to positive child develop-ment, in the traditional literal sense, one must think t hat it is impossiblefor a child raised without a father to develop successfully. Most whosay ‘‘fathers are essential’’ know of discon?rming examples, and thusdo not mean this. In my opinion, the word essential is not going togo away in public discourse about fathers, but both practitionersand fathers do not need to get ‘‘stuck’’ on it. In addressing issues o fmasculinity with fathers, practitioners can offer understandings of theterm that meet fathers’ needs for support.5. Of the other potential linkages between fatherhood and masculinityrelevant to practitioners, a particularly important one concerns howmasculinity in?uences the connection between fatherhood and employ-ment. One of the clearest ways that gender in?uences the experience ofparenthood is that following a birth, especially a ?rst birth, fathers’ laborforce participation generally increases, while mothers’ decreases, aphenomenon so obvious that its theoretical signi?cance may beImplications for Research and Prac tice 51 E1C02 01/02/2010 16:22:55 Page 52overlooked. 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F., Davis-Kean, P. E., Hofferth, S. L. (2001). Children’s timewith fathers in intact families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 136–154.References 57 References (98) ... Australian research describes a new father trend of men's involvement in family (Doucet and Lee, 2014;Pleck, 2010). Contemporary fatherhood is characterised by the father's parenting practices and their contribution to domestic duties (Doucet and Lee, 2014). ... ... Many fathers shared how they saw themselves as the backup or as the secondary support to the mother. According to Pleck (2010), what once seemed a natural parenting model in which fathers were "helpers" to mothers, is now replaced with the reshaping of roles and behaviours of fathers. However, it was evident that participants in this study were still framed by the "helper" notion as demonstrated by Jon who described his partner's role in the first 12 months. ... ... It was evident that the bond was
built through the time, care and attention they gave to
their children. The men formed fathering identities that
involve being more emotionally available and meeting the
child's needs (Doucet and Lee, 2014;Pleck, 2010). For Bronn,
being a PCGF was something he always wanted to do, I think
it was a choosing definitely, that it was always clear to me
that I want to stay at home at some point if we have
children.. Getting into
the “Dad Zone”: How Do Primary Caregiving Fathers
of Young Children Experience Social Support? ... In fact, fathers who are seen to emphasise adherence to traditional masculine gender roles have been shown to have deleterious effects on their relationships with, and contribute to personal insecurities in, their sons (DeFranc & Mahalik, 2002). Thus, a father's role in their child's development does not appear to be uniquely masculine (Pleck, 2010). ... ... The present study investigated the
impact of the perceived quality of the father-son
relationship on hegemonic masculinity, and if ACEs,
mother-son relationship quality, and support from friends
and family account for variance in hegemonic masculinity
over and above that explained by father-son relationship
quality. Building on previous research (e.g., Pleck, 2010),
father-son relationship quality was hypothesised to
significantly and negatively predict hegemonic masculinity.
This hypothesis was not supported. ... Daddy issues:
Friends rather than fathers influence adult men's hegemonic
masculinity ... Parents' gender is only one factor among many-including cultural context, parents' personal history, economic resources, and child characteristics-that shape parent-child relationships . Heterosexual parents typically perform complementary tasks in line with gender ideologies of parental responsibility; as mothers and fathers become increasingly similar in how and how much they engage with children, parents' gender is even less salient for children's outcomes (Cabrera et al. 2011;Pleck 2010). Though women still perform a disproportionate share of childcare (Raley, Bianchi, and Wang 2012), men's contributions are rising as the "new father ideal" emphasizes paternal caregiving (Griswold 1993). ... ... Fatherhood programs have also
helped marginalized men redefine responsible fatherhood to
emphasize the emotional and relational aspects of parenting
(Anderson, Kohler, and Letiecq 2002;Roy and Dyson 2010).
Programs that teach about the importance of role modeling
could be a source of motivation for economically vulnerable
men who strive to justify this non-financial involvement
(Pleck 2010). . Role Modeling
Responsibility: The Essential Father Discourse in
Responsible Fatherhood Programming and Policy ... On the one hand, fathers who adhere to traditional masculinity tend to be less warm toward children and less involved in their lives (Bulanda 2004;DeMaris et al. 2011;Petts et al. 2018). On the other hand, some fathers who do not ideologically endorse gender equality have been found to be highly involved in childcare (Eerola and Mykkänen 2015;Shows and Gerstel 2009), which may be due, in part, to essentialist beliefs about men's unique impact on children (Jordan 2019;Pleck 2010;Randles 2020). Given these mixed results, it is necessary to further investigate how adhering to masculine norms shapes father involvement. ... ... Fathering behavior was measured based on Pleck's (2010) multidimensional conceptualization of father involvement to include measures of both instrumental and expressive parenting (Finley and Schwartz 2004). We included three measures of instrumental parenting: engaging in caregiving behaviors, positive control of children through monitoring their behaviors, and harsh disciplinary practices such as yelling or spanking. ... Variation in
Masculinities and Fathering Behaviors: A Cross-National
Comparison of the United States and Canada ... Theories of fathering and
fatherhood are closely anchored in hegemonic gender
ideologies, including ideals about masculinities, whereas
theories of mothering and motherhood are often implicitly
taken as generalizable to parents of both genders (Day &
Mackey, 1989;Palkovitz et al., 2014;Pleck, 2010). Connell's
(1995) influential theories on gender and power define
hegemonic masculinity as a socially constructed form of
masculinity that is considered to be superior to femininity
and other types of masculinity, albeit with varying contents
across different sociocultural contexts. ... Beyond
WEIRD-centric Theories and Perspectives: Masculinity and
Fathering in Chinese Societies ... Some of this research support the
findings of the present study when showing that the quality
of father-infant attachment security was determined by the
quantity of time fathers are accessible, and physically and
emotionally available to respond to their infant's signals,
their emerging emotions, and needs (Caldera, 2004;Lamb,
2010;Pleck, 2010aPleck, , 2010bGeiger, 1996). In contrast,
other studies have separated the quality of care from its
quantity or time the caregiver was involved in such care as
two different components of infant-father attachment
security (Brown, Mangelsdorf & Neff, 2012;Pleck,
2010aPleck, , 2010b. To them the quality of care was, as
opposed to quantity of time, determined by caregivers'
sensitivity and ability to recognize and accurately
interpret their infant's signals, and respond to them in
ways that are affectionate, well-timed, and stimulating the
interaction (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974). ... Fathers in dual
caregiver heterosexual families share their perspectives on
optimal nurturing for their infants Fathers in Child
Psychotherapy Paternal
Psychological Well-being After Union Dissolution: Does
Involved Fatherhood Have a Protective Effect? The Aging Men's Masculinity Ideologies Inventory (AMMII): Dimensionality, Variance Composition, Measurement Invariance by Gender, and Validity Why Could Father
Involvement Benefit Children? Theoretical Perspectives Four theoretical perspectives about why father involvement could have positive consequences for child development are briefly reviewed: attachment theory, social capital theory, Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory, and "essential father" theory. Strengths and weaknesses of each perspective are discussed, and the prospects for an integrated ecological-parental capital theory of paternal influence on child development are considered. Why Could Father
Involvement Benefit Children? example of research operationalizing paternal80engagement and accessibility in terms of amountof time spent, assessed by time diaries (Yeung,Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001), whilesimultaneously studying paternal warmth, moni-toring, and economic support (Hofferth, 2003).85Researchers continue to vary in whether theyinclude cognitions, affects, and economic supportunder the term ‘‘involvem ent.’’ Whether underthe rubric of involvement or not, what is impor-tant is that these aspects of fathering are being90increasingly investigated.Although Lamb and Pleck formulated theengagement component in a relatively content-free way emphasizing amount of time spent, theyimplicitly had in mind positive forms of engage-95ment, that is, kinds of activities likely to promotedevelopment. To take an extreme case, hadthey been pressed on the point, Lamb andPleck would not have considered the time afather spent physically abusing his child to be100paternal engagement! The measures of paterna linvolvement actually used in most research thathas found associations with child outcomes forthe last several decades have not been content-free, but have actually included elements of105warmth and support. Based on these conceptualand empirical considerations, I first recom-mended a decade ago that the construct namebe modified to positive paternal involv ement(Pleck, 1997). In addition, paternal decision mak-110ing and monitoring have been particularly studiedas aspects of the responsibility component ofinvolvement. Thus, in analyzing existing theoryabout why father involvement might havepositive consequences for child development, this115paper conceptualizes father involvement asincluding not only fathers’ time spent and acti-vities with their child but also other aspects offathering such as warmth, support, decisio nmaking, and monitoring.120Current ResearchResearch designs in investigations of theconsequences of father involvement for child out-comes have become increasingly sophisticated.For example, it has now become the methodolo-125gical standard that data about fathering and childoutcomes should come from different infor mants,to avoid the potential confound of shared vari-ance due to same-informant bias. Researchershave also recognized that in investigating130links between fathering involvement and childoutcomes, maternal involvement needs to becontrolled, because mother involvement andfather involvement are often positively related(Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004).135Existing research is also increasingly aware thatfather involvement may influence child outcomesthrough multiple pathways. In addition to directeffects, it is becoming more widely understood thatfathering may have indirect or mediated effects on140children, especially by influencing mothering. Inaddition, the effects of fathering on children maybe moderated by other factors such as fathers’employment status and attitudes about fathering.Even the possibility of bidirectional influence145between fathering and child outcomes (i.e., positivechild behaviors may elicit greater father involve-ment) is beginning to be recognized more explicitly.However, existing theory and research arerelatively inexplicit about why, conceptually,150father involvement might be expected to havedirect positive effects on children. This lack oftheoretical clarity might first appear to be uniqueto fathering, but it actually applies to parentingresearch more broadly. Conceptualizing the155dynamics of the influence of parenting on develop-ment in fact raises fundamental and profoundissues (see review chapters in Bornstein, 2002). Inthis context, this article analyzes four existing‘‘middle range’’ theories that may be particularly160relevant to conceptualizing the dynamics of directpaternal influences, and considers the prospectsfor an integrated perspective.Four Theoretical PerspectivesAttachment Theory165Attachment theory is rooted in evolutionarypsychology and biology. In contemporary attach-ment theory (Bretherton, 1985), secure attachmentrelationships are understood as providing theinfant with a ‘‘secure base’’ from which to explore170the world, leading the child to develop a positive‘‘internal working model’’ of self in relation toothers that is a key foundation for effective rela-tionships with adults and peers. This positive inter-nal working model fosters cognitive development175and skills acquisition as well as social andemotional development.It has been long recognized, of course, thatinfants form attachment relationships withfathers and other caregiving adults besides180mothers (Kotelchuk, 1967). Further, positivesocial and cognitive outcomes in children arenearly as strongly related to secure infant–fatherattachment as to secure infant–mother attach-ment, and the effects of infant–father attachment185are independent of the effects of infant–motherattachment. In addition, the paternal behaviorsPLECK2 predicting secure attachment are similar to thematernal behaviors predicting secure attach ment(Main & Weston, 1981). Thus, father involvement190may promote child development because fatherinvolvement promotes secure infant attachment(to the father), which in turn promotes good childoutcomes through the processes hypothesized byattachment theorists.195Attachment theory has two important limita-tions as a basis for conceptualizing why fatherinvolvement has positive effects, however. First,although the con sequences of attachment for thedeveloping individual are viewed as lasting until200at least the young adult years, the period duringwhich parental involvement is viewed as directlyinfluencing attachment is restricted to the child’searliest years. The theory does not provide muchbasis for viewing paternal (or maternal) involve-205ment with older children and on adolescents asinfluential. Of course, for a theory to be of value,it is not necessary that it explain paternal influen ceon children at all stages of their development; per-haps different theories are needed for different210stages. Nonetheless, a model of paternal influencesonly in infancy and early childhood (albeit withlong term outcomes) will not meet the theoreticalneeds of most fatherhood researchers.Second, although attachment theory is well215established within the field of human development,it is nonetheless controversial. In addition tostrong adherents (Cassidy, 1999 ), it has its shareof vocal critics as well (Vaughn & Bost, 1999).Overall, attachment theory is too narrow, in its220inherent scope as well as in its acceptance withindevelopmental science, to provide the fundamentaltheoretical basis for why paternal involvementmight lead to positive developmental outcomes inchildren, adolescents, and adults.225Social Capital TheorySocial capital theory provides a second possibletheoretical approach. The concept of social capital(Coleman, 1988) is being increasingly used indevelopmental science (Amato, 1995; Entwisle &230Astone, 1994; Furstenburg & Hughes, 1995).Coleman identified two kinds of ‘‘capital’’ providedby parents that facilitate optimal development.The first is financial capital, providi ng materialresources to children such as food, shelter, goods,235and services, including education. The second kindof capital is social capital, in two forms. One isfamily social capital, in the form of parentingbehavior promoting the child’s cognitive-socialdevelopment, school readiness, and educational240aspirations—in effect, parents ’ socialization oftheir children. Provision of family social capital(socialization) is thought to be especially influ-enced by parents’ level of education. An additionalform of social capital is community social capital,245referring to the linkag es to the larger world thatparents provide children, in the form of servingas advocates for the children in schools and othersettings, as well as sharing their own social net-works with their children (e.g., getting a friend to250help the child, or to give the adolescent a job) orsharing knowledge of how to negotiate entry intothe adult world (e.g., knowing who to call, howto act).These distinctions may imply that at different255points in development, different aspects of parents’socioeconomic status are especially relevant toparental influence on child outcomes. Forexample, parents’ income and education (indicat-ing material and family social capital) may be260more important early in development, whileparents’ employment status and occupation (indi-cating community social capital) may be moreinfluential later in development (cf. Leydendecker,Harwood, Comparini, & Yalcinkaya, 2005). The265distinction between the family social capitalexpressed in parental socialization, on the onehand, and the community social capital providedby parent’s jobs, on the other, calls to mind theclassic structural-functionalist interpretation of270the family division of labor: the mother socializesthe children and manages other aspects of internalfamily process, while the father connects the familyand its members to the outside world via hisemployment (Parsons & Bales, 1955). Of course,275today mothers, too, increasingly provide theirchildren community social capital via theiremployment. In addition, because mother’sconnections to their kin networks are typicallystronger than fathers’, the community social280capital mothers provide via kinship relations maygenerally exceed fathers.Coleman’s analysis of the material and socialcapital provided by parents provides a potentialstructure for conceptualizing the nature of285paternal influence. On average, fathers earn morethan mothers, thus providing more material capi-tal, but fathers participate less in socialization.For community social capital, it is less clearwhether fathers provide more or less than mothers290when the distinction between job-related networksand kin networks is taken into account. For eachmode of parental capital, it is necessary to developmore specific theory about precisely how that formof parental capital influences development, includ-295ing how different subtypes within the three broadforms may influence development via differentpathways (e.g., material capital from earning moreincome vs. economizing on family spending mayFATHER INVOLVEMENT BENEFIT CHILDREN3 have different effects, as may community social300capital from parental jobs vs. kin networks).Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory: TheConcept of ‘‘Proximal Process’’Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1986) proposed anecological perspective on human development that305has become highly influential. His model is per-haps most well-known for making distinctionsamong different ecological ‘‘levels’’ or ‘‘systems’’as they bear on the child’s development. Startingfrom the innermost level, these ecological systems310are: microsystems (face-to-face relationships thechild has with parents, peers, teachers, and otheradults); mesosystems (linkages between microsys-tems, e.g., the relationship between microsystempartners such as parent and teacher, and between315mother and father); exosystems (relationships inwhich the child’s microsystem partners are embed-ded, but in which the child does not participatedirectly, e.g., parent’s relationship with a jobsupervisor or co-workers); macrosystems (social320policies and programs as well as broader ‘‘culturalscripts’’ influencing the prior systems, e.g., par-ental leave policies, cultural ideology about therole of the mother vs. father); and chronosystems(historical change in the prior systems, as well as325developmental change during the life course ofthe child in these systems). Bronfenbrenner viewedthese systems as nested within each other, oftenusing as a metaphor the Russian carved woodenmatroishka doll; opening the outer layer of the doll330reveals an identical, slightly smaller doll, whichwhen opened in turn reveals a smaller doll, andso on.This model provided a framework for organiz-ing the large body of developmental research335emerging in the 1970s and 1980s that fell outsidethe classic mother–child research parad igm thatdominated the 1940s and 1950s. In addition tofather–child relationships, Bronfenbrenner’s newmodel could accommodate other new lines of340research such as effects on children of their rela-tionships with siblings, peers, teachers, and childcare providers; the effects on children of the rela-tionships between their parents , and between par-ents and teachers or child care providers; the345effects of parents’ jobs; the effects of social policiesconcerning employment, welfare, and parentalleave.Less well-known but equally or even moreimportant in Bronfenbrenner’s theory is his350conceptualization of exactly what about microsys-tem relationships promotes development. AsBronfenbrenner describes this core developmentaldynamic in the first of his two formal ecologicalpropositions: ‘‘human development...takes place355through a process of progressively more complex,reciprocal interactions between an active, evolving,biopsychological human organism and thepersons, objects, and symbols in its immediateenvironment...Such enduring forms of inter-360action...are referred to as ‘proximal processes’’’(Bronfenbrenner, 1994, p. 1644, emphasis added).Bronfenbrenner often analogized proximal pro cessto a ping-pong game between the child and his orher microsystem partners, but one in which the365movement of the ball back and forth becomesincreasingly complex, and in which a more maturemicrosystem partner introduces move complex‘‘moves’’ that stimulate the development ofreciprocally more complex moves by the child.370These enduring patterns of reciprocal, increasinglycomplex interaction with significant others(both adult and peer) ultimately are what ‘‘drives’’development of the child into an adult. InBronfenbrenner’s concept of proximal process,375development is an inherently relational event,rather than an event taking place within theindividual.This ecological perspective is also evident inother widely used conceptualizations of parenting.380Belsky’s (1984) influential ‘‘process model of par-enting’’ is entirely consistent with Bronfenbrenner’sconception. While not using Bronfenbrenner’s‘‘system’’ terminology, Belsky identified specificmesosystem (e.g., marital relationship) and exosys-385tem (parents’ jobs, social support network) influ-ences on the child via their influence onparenting. Echoing Bronfenbrenner’s emphasison the reciprocal nature of parent–child interac-tion, Belsky also stressed the influence of child390behaviors on parenting. Paralleling proxim al pro-cesses, Belsky’s description of the kind of parentingthat promotes development—‘‘sensitive parenting,that is attuned to the needs of the child’’ (p. 85)—is consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s notion of395proximal process.The idea of proximal process is also evident inthe ways that attachment research and parentalstyle research have evolved. Whereas attachmentresearch initially viewed caregiver stable presence400and warmth as the characteristics promotingsecure attachment, it now increasingly emphasizescaregiver ‘‘sensitivity’’ and ‘‘responsiveness.’’ Like-wise, parental style research has undergone a simi-lar shift from formulating the first of the two405dimensions underlying authoritative parental stylesimply as warmth, to formulating it as responsive-ness to the child.Using Bronfenb renner’s ecological theory, thedynamics of fathers’ specific influence as parentsPLECK4 410can formulated in two ways. First, fathers functionas microsystem partners with whom children canexperience good ‘‘proximal process’’ promotingdevelopment. The more microsystem partners thechild has with whom she has good proximal pro-415cess, the better for the child’s development—aslong as the child is not ‘‘overloaded’’ cognitivelyor socio-emotionally, and the child’s microsystempartners are not in conflict with each other (i.e.,the child’s mesosystem relationships are good).420In this first approach, fathers are viewed simplyas important additional microsystem partners forthe children, but not necessarily as distinctive orunique ones.The second view is that fathers are a unique kind425of microsystem partner. Because fathers’ personal-ities differ from mothers’, children’s proximal pro-cess interactions with fathers differ those withmothers in ways that are potentially importantfor development. For example, Parke (2002) has430suggested that fathers’ rough-and-tumble playmay have a special role in promoting the child’semotion regulation. Stating this in proximal pro-cess language, to the extent that fathers engage inrough-and-tumble play with the child more than435mothers do, and to the extent that rough-and-tumble play promotes a particular aspect of devel-opment, emotion regulation, that is not promotedto the same degree by other forms of interaction,children’s relationships with fathers have distinc-440tive consequences. Bronfenbrenner’s concept ofproximal process thus provides a potential under-pinning to conceptualizations about ‘‘unique’’kinds of parenta l influence more often providedby fathers.445Of course, the validity of such conceptualiza-tions of paternal influence depends entirely onqualifiers such as ‘‘to the extent that fathers morethan mothers engage in rough-and-tumble playwith the child’’ and ‘‘to the extent that rough-450and-tumble play as a proximal process promotesemotion regulation.’’ Determining the extent towhich fathers and mothers differ on a parentingvariable of course requires going beyond thesimplistic approach of assessing only whether or455not there is a ‘‘significa nt difference’’ betweenfathers’ and mothers’ means. Such tests dependon the statistical power provided by the samplesize and the internal reliability of the measures,and can be sample-dependent in other respects460as well.‘‘Essential Father’’ TheoryThe preceding point leads directly to what canbe termed ‘‘essential father’’ theory. In The Mythof Masculini ty (1981), I critically analyzed the465‘‘male gender role identity’’ (MGRI) paradigmthat dominated developmental psychology’sapproach to gender development between the1930s and the 1970s. Some of its central prop osi-tions concerned fathers’ unique role in promoting470appropriate gender identity, especially amongsons, in whom its acquisition was viewed as inher-ently risky and failure-prone. In developmentalresearch, this line of argument is now out of vogue.However, the idea that fathers make a unique and475essential contribution to child development hassurvived in our culture’s ethnopsychology. Silver-stein and Auberbach’s (1999) ‘‘Deconstructingthe essential fathe r’’ provides a name for it:essential father theory.480Essential father theory, in contemporaryculture, does not necessarily specify all of theassumptions that the earlier MGRI paradigmdid, for example, that males have higher rates ofinsecure gender identity than females, that the pre-485ponderance of female elementary teachers disad-vantages boy s, and that homosexuality is anexpression of impaired gender identity. The essen-tial father model also varies somewhat from theMGRI paradigm’s propositions that sons are490especially in need of fathering, that the primarymechanism of paternal influence is identificationor modeling, and that the primary consequencesof inadequate fathering are either hypermasculi-nity, or effeminacy and homosexuality. By con-495trast, essential father theory gives more equalattention to daughters as beneficiaries of fathering.It also focuses more on adult outcomes such ashigh school completion, economic self-sufficiency,not being incarcerated, and marriage, with little500emphasis on homosexuality. Finally, essentialfather theory does not specify a particular processof paternal influence such as identification.In evaluating essential father theory, Silversteinand Auerbach were perceptive in identifying as505fundamental the comparison of ch ild outcomesin two-parent heterosexual families with child out-comes in two-parent lesbian families. The tra-ditional contrast viewed as documenting theessentiality of fathering is, of course, the compari-510son between children reared by mothers andfathers, and children reared by mothers alone(National Fatherhood Initiative, 2003). Thisapproach is problematic, however, because it con-founds the absence of a father with being reared by515one parent instead of two. The comparisonbetween child outcomes in two-parent heterosex-ual families with child outcomes in two-parent les-bian families is a more informative one because itcompares children with two parents, one of whom520is male, with children with two parents, neither ofFATHER INVOLVEMENT BENEFIT CHILDREN5 whom is male. This research provides little supportfor the notion that children of two lesbian parentsshow poorer developmental outcomes (see reviewsin Patterson & Chan, 1999; Stacey & Biblarz,5252001). Of course, failing to find significant differ-ences does not positively establish similarity,especially in the small samples typical of these stu-dies. Another limitation is that most of thisresearch has used convenience samples. However,530Wainwright, Russell, and Patterson’s (2004) recentanalysis using matched cases from the Add Healthnational sample, likewise fails to find more nega-tive outcomes in childr en of lesbian parents, andeven finds several more positive outcomes. Thus,535data presently available do not support essentialfather theory, a t least with respect to the rangeof child, adolescent, and young adult outcomesused in extant research.Summary and Future Directions: An540Integrated Ecological-Parental CapitalTheoryThe promise that attachment theory holds somepromise for the conceptualization of how exactlypaternal influence works is limited to the attach-545ment research community. Empirical support foressential father theory as an overarching perspec-tive on paternal influence is at present weak. Bron-fenbrenner’s concept of proximal process and thesocial capital framework appear to provide the550best available foundation for developing futuretheory about exactly how fathering promotes, ordoes not promote, development. Below I presentsome key propositions in an integrated ecologi-cal-parental capital theory of paternal influence.555I use the term ‘‘parental capital’’ to include socialcapital (within the family and with the community)and material capital.(1) Both fathers and mothers (and other adults)potentially contribute material capital, family560social capital (socialization), and communitysocial capital to their children’s development.(2) Fathers, on average, earn more than mothers,thereby potentially providing more materialcapital on average, but within-gender vari-565ation is great. It is an empirical questionwhether and to what extent fathers’ andmothers’ earnings spent on behalf of the childhave similar versus differential effects,especially when studied in different contexts570(e.g., coresid ent vs. non-coresident fathering).Results in this area will stimulate the develop-ment of future theory. In addition, materialcapital can be obtained in other ways besidesearnings, by both fathers and mothers, in575ways that vary systematically by ecologicalcontext.(3) On average, fathers may provide morecommunity social capital than mothers viatheir jobs; mothers may provide more com-580munity social capital than fathers via kinshipnetworks; and father and mothers may pro-vide similar levels of social capital based onnon-job, non-kin networks. However, within-gender variation is great, as is variation across585ecological contexts. It is an empirical questionto what extent fathers provide more or less, ordifferent kinds, of community social capitalthan mothers. Likewise, it is an empirical ques-tion whether fathe rs’ and mothers’ job-related590community social capital offers similar versusdifferent benefits to children; whether fathers’and mothers’ kinship-related social capitaloffers similar versus diff erent benefits; andwhether fathers’ and mothers’ non-job, non-595kin social capital offers sim ilar versus differentbenefits. Findings in this area will contributeto future theory development.(4) Family social capital (socialization) is potentiallyprovided by both fathers and mothers. The par-600ental provision of family social capital takesplace through proximal process interactions.These interactions takes varied forms (e.g., pro-viding a secure base, modeling, responsive=sensitive reciprocal interaction, monitoring,605controlling, teaching). It is an empiricalquestion whether, on average, fathersprovide less family social capital than motherswhen the varied forms of family social capitalare taken into account. Again, within-gender610variation and cross-context variation aregreat.(5) The benefits offered to childr en by a givenlevel of family social capital (i.e., socialization)when provided by fathers may greater, similar,615or less than when provided by mothers. Inaddition, the effects of fathers’ family socialcapital may vary by context. For example, currentresearch suggests that coresident fathers’degree of involvement is associated with posi-620tive child outcomes (Pleck & Masciadrelli,2004), but in non-coresident fathers, frequencyof visitation has not been found to be asso-ciated with child outcomes (King, 1994). How-ever, the latter finding could result from the625limitations of visitation frequency as an indi-cator of paternal socialization involvementfor non-coresident fathers, or lack of attentionto confounding variables such as coparentalconflict.PLECK6 630ReferencesAmato, P. R. (1995). Single-parent households as settings forchildren’s development, well-being and attainment: Asocial network=resources perspective. In A.-M. Ambert(Ed.), Sociological studies of children, 7, 19–47.Q3635Amato, P. R. (1998). More than money? Men’s contribution totheir children’s lives. In A. Booth, & A. C. Crouter (Eds.),Men in families: When do they get involved? What differ-ence does it make? (pp. 241–278). Mahwah, NJ: ErlbaumAssociates.640Astone, N. M., Dariotis, J., Sonenstein, F., & Pleck, J. H.(2006, April). Fatherhood, union status and men’s worklives. Presented at the Population Association of America,Los Angeles.Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process645model. Child Development, 55, 83–96.Bornstein, M. (Ed.). (2002). Handbook of parenting (2nd ed.).Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Bretherton, I. (1985) Attachment theory: Retrospect and pros-pect. In Monographs of the society for research in child650development, 50(1=2), 3–35.Q4Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). Ecology of human development:Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context655for human development. Developmental Psychology, 22,723–742.Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). Ecological models of human devel-opment. In T. Husen, & T. N. Postelthwaite (Eds.), Inter-national encyclopedia of education (pp. 1642–1647).Q3660Cassidy, J. (Ed.). (1999). Handbook of attachment: Theory,research, and clinical applications. New York: Guilford.Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of humancapital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 95–120.Elster, A. (Ed.). (1986). Adolescent fatherhood. Hillsdale, NJ:665Erlbaum Associates.Entwisle, D. R., & Astone, N. M. (1994). Some practical guide-lines for measure youth’s race=ethnicity and socioeco-nomic status. Child Development, 65, 1521–1540.Furstenberg, F. R., & Hughes, M. E. (1995). Social capital and670successful development among at-risk youth. Journal ofMarriage and the Family, 57, 580–192.Hofferth, S. L. (2003). Race=ethnic differences in fatherinvolvement in two-parent families: Culture, context, oreconomy? Journal of Family Issues,24, 185–216.675King, V. (1994). Variation in the consequences of nonresidentfather involvement for children’s well-being. Journal ofMarriage and the Family, 56, 963–972.Knoester, C., & Eggebeen, D. J. (2006). The effects of transitionto fatherhood and subsequent children on men’s well-680being and social participation. Journal of Family Issues,27, 1532–1560.Kotelchuk, M. (1967). The nature of the infant’s tie to itsfather. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, HarvardUniversity.685Lamb, M. E. (Ed.). (1981). The role of the father in childdevelopment. New York: Wiley.Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A.(1985). Paternal behavior in humans. American Zoologist,25, 883–894.690Leydendecker, B., Harwood, R., Comparini, L., & Yalcinkaya,A. (2005). Socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and paren-ting. In T. Luster, & L. Okagaki (Eds.), Parenting:An ecological perspective (pp. 319–342). Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum.695Main, M., & Weston, D. R. (1981). The quality of the toddler’srelationship to mother and to father: Related to conflictbehavior and the readiness to establish new relationships.Child Development, 52, 932–940.Marsiglio, W., Amato, P., Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. (2000).700Scholarship on fatherhood in the 1990s and beyond.Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1173–1191.National Fatherhood Initiative. (2003). Father facts (4th ed.).Gaithersburg, MD: National Fatherhood Initiative.Parke, R. D. (2002). Fathers and families. In M. H. Bornstein705(Ed.), Handbook of parenting (2nd ed., Volume 3,pp. 27–73). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.Parsons, T., & Bales, R. F. (1955). Family socialization andinteraction process. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Patterson, C., & Chan, R. (1999). Families headed by gay and710lesbian parents. In M. Lamb (Ed.), Parenting and childdevelopment in ‘‘nontraditional’’ families (pp. 191–219).Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Pleck, J. H. (1981). The myth of masculinity. Cambridge, MA:The MIT Press.715Pleck, J. H. (1997). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources, andconsequences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the fatherin child development (3rd ed., pp. 66–103). New York:Wiley.Pleck, J. H., Lamb, M. E., & Levine, J. A. (1985). Facilitating720future change in men’s family roles. Marriage and FamilyReview, 9(3–4), 11–16.Pleck, J. H., & Masciadrelli, B. (2004). Paternal involvement inU.S. residential fathers: Levels, sources, and conse-quences. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in725child development (4th ed., pp. 222–271). New York:Wiley.Pleck, J. H., & Stueve, J. L. (2001). Time and paternal involve-ment. In K. Daly (Ed.), Minding the time in family experi-ence: Emerging perspectives and issues (pp. 205–226).730Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science.Silverstein, L., & Auerbach, C. (1999). Deconstructing theessential father. American Psychologist, 55, 397–407.Stacey, J., & Biblarz, T. (2001). (How) does the sexual orien-tation of parents matter? American Sociological Review,73566, 159–183.Vaughn, B. E., & Bost, K. K. (1999). Attachment and tempera-ment. In J. Cassidy (Ed.), Handbook of attachment:Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 198–225).New York: Guilford.740Wainwright, J., Russell, S., & Patterson, C. (2004). Psychoso-cial adjustment, school outcomes, and romantic relation-ships of adolescents with same-sex parents. ChildDevelopment, 75, 1886–1898.Yeung, W. J., Sandberg, J. F., Davis-Kean, P. E., Hofferth, S.745L. (2001). Children’s time with fathers in intact families.Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 136–154.Received: &;Q5Accepted: &FATHER INVOLVEMENT BENEFIT CHILDREN7 References (41) ... Babanin ulasilabilirliginde en çok babalarin çalisma süresi ve temposu etken olmaktadir (Aldous, 1998;Pleck, 2007). Babanin çalisma disinda kalan bos zamanini kendi ilgisi dogrultusunda degerlendirmeyi yeglemesi; zaman içinde çocugun babasini kendisine zaman ayiramayacak kadar yogun olarak algilamasina yol açmakta ve aralarindaki iletisim giderek zayiflamaktadir (Pleck, 2007). ... ... Babanin ulasilabilirliginde en
çok babalarin çalisma süresi ve temposu
etken olmaktadir (Aldous, 1998;Pleck, 2007). Babanin
çalisma disinda kalan bos zamanini kendi ilgisi
dogrultusunda degerlendirmeyi yeglemesi; zaman içinde
çocugun babasini kendisine zaman ayiramayacak kadar
yogun olarak algilamasina yol açmakta ve aralarindaki
iletisim giderek zayiflamaktadir (Pleck, 2007). Ancak anne
ve babanin tam zamanli çalistigi durumlarda anne,
babaya göre çocuklariyla daha fazla zaman
geçirmektedir (Aldous, 1998). .. Fathers'
caregiving and breadwinning: A gender congruence
analysis Maurer, Pleck, and Rane's Gender Congruence Theory was further expanded via Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory and tested to predict parenting behaviors in fathers and mothers. Results provided some support for the revised theory for fathers: Both perceived expectations from their wives for caregiving behavior and the perceived caregiving behaviors of other fathers positively predicted their own caregiving behavior, whereas no independent variables were able to predict their breadwinning behavior. Results provided little support for the revised theory for mothers: Only the perceived caregiving behaviors of other mothers positively predicted their own caregiving behavior, and no independent variables predicted their breadwinning behavior. Role Identity was not a significant predictor of behavior in either role for fathers or mothers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) Fathers’ Caregiving and Breadwinning:A Gender Congruence AnalysisTrent W. Maurer and Joseph H. PleckGeorgia Southern UniversityMaurer, Pleck, and Rane’s Gender Congruence Theory was further expanded viaBandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and tested to predict parenting behaviors in fathersand mothers. Results provided some support for the revised theory for fathers: Bothperceived expectations from their wives for caregiving behavior and the perceivedcaregiving behaviors of other fathers positively predicted their own caregiving behav-ior, whereas no independent variables were able to predict their breadwinning behavior.Results provided little support for the revised theory for mothers: Only the perceivedcaregiving behaviors of other mothers positively predicted their own caregiving be-havior, and no independent variables predicted their breadwinning behavior. RoleIdentity was not a signi?cant predictor of behavior in either role for fathers or mothers.Keywords: fathers, parenting, caregiving, Gender Congruence Theory, Social Cogni-tive TheoryThe roles, responsibilities, and functions offatherhood are changing (Furstenberg, 1995;Palkovitz, 2002). Although ?nancially provid-ing for one’s family (i.e., breadwinning) hastraditionally been a task and responsibility as-signed to fathers (Aryee & Luk, 1996), mothershave been increasingly sharing in this responsi-bility (Hochschild & Machung, 1989). Con-versely, providing child care (i.e., caregiving)has traditionally been a task and responsibilityassigned to mothers (Aryee & Luk, 1996), butfathers have been providing an increasing pro-portion of the family caregiving (see Pleck,1997, for a review). Further, many fathers re-port that although they feel social pressure to bethe family breadwinner (Doucet, 2004), theypersonally want to be more involved with care-giving and perceive increasing sociocultural ex-pectations to be involved with caregiving (Hen-wood & Procter, 2003).The changing nature of fatherhood is furthercomplicated by two issues. First, although manyfathers both want to be involved with caregivingand perceive a social expectation to be in-volved, caregiving is still primarily de?ned aswoman’s work or feminine, which means thatmany fathers need to cognitively rede?ne thosetasks that are nontraditional for men as stillsomehow being masculine to reduce the threatto their own masculinity (Doucet, 2004). Thatis, because the caregiving role is not tradition-ally de?ned as masculine, men are less likely tosocially or personally identify with it as long asthey perceive it as feminine and are more likelyto participate in it because of extrinsic motiva-tions (e.g., because they think it will make theirwives happy).Second, and largely as a product of the ?rstissue, providing caregiving is still more discre-tionary for fathers than it is for mothers (Riggs,2005), particularly when it comes to choosingbetween breadwinning and caregiving responsi-bilities (Singley & Hynes, 2005). This idea thatfathers’ caregiving responsibilities are morevoluntary and negotiable than mothers’ caneven be seen in media portrayals of family life(Fleming & Tobin, 2005), which provide fa-Trent W. Maurer, Department of Hospitality, Tourism,and Family & Consumer Sciences, Georgia Southern Uni-versity; Joseph H. Pleck, Department of Human & Com-munity Development, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.This manuscript is based on the ?rst author’s doctoraldissertation. The work reported here was supported by theCooperative State Research, Education and Extension Ser-vice, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Project ILLU-45-0366 to Joseph H. Pleck.Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-dressed to Trent W. Maurer, Department of Hospitality,Tourism, and Family & Consumer Sciences, P.O. Box8021, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30460.E-mail: tmaurer@georgiasouthern.eduPsychology of Men & Masculinity Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association2006, Vol. 7, No. 2, 101–112 1524-9220/06/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1524-9220.7.2.101101 thers with ample examples that mothers are theprimary caregivers in society and that fathers’contributions to family caregiving are both min-imal and ancillary. So the question remains,Why do some fathers become more involvedwith caregiving, and how does their gender in-?uence the factors that encourage or discouragetheir involvement?Although signi?cant research on fatherhoodhas been conducted in the past quarter centuryand a substantial amount of that research hasbeen directed to attempting to explain why fa-thers choose to get involved with caregiving(see Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000, fora review; cf. Pleck, 1997), there have been fewattempts to identify how gendered expectationsfor parental behavior may in?uence fathers’(and mothers’) behavior. This fact is particu-larly striking given the increasing interestamong some researchers in the subjective expe-riences of fathers qua fathers from a symbolicinteractionist perspective, more generally, andan identity theory perspective, more speci?cally(e.g., Fox & Bruce, 1999; Ihinger-Tallman, Pas-ley, & Buehler, 1993; Marsiglio & Cohan,2000; Maurer, Pleck, & Rane, 2001; McBride &Rane, 1997; Minton & Pasley, 1996). Theseresearchers have attempted to illuminate theprocesses by which men identify with the socialrole of father, the meaning of that identity, andthe relationship between father identity andmen’s behaviors, particularly as they concerninvolvement with their children. Certainly, animportant part of not only identity, but also ofsocial roles and expectations is gender, yetmany of these researchers have failed to exam-ine how gendered expectations may help de?neidentity and social expectations or even moder-ate the relationship between identity, social ex-pectations, and behavior.However, this shortcoming may be explainedby the fact that this line of research has beenlargely atheoretical (outside of the general guid-ing principles of symbolic interactionism andidentity theory), and what theory has emergedhas generally been limited to explaining speci?cresults or justifying limited hypotheses (seeDoherty, Kouneski, & Erikson, 1998, for a re-view). Further, given that much of the researchon fatherhood has been done exclusively in menwithout comparison to women (e.g., Ihinger-Tallman et al., 1993; Minton & Pasley, 1996), itwould be dif?cult to develop a theoreticalmodel that adequately hypothesizes the effectgender would have on involvement.Review of Gender Congruence TheoryThere is one notable exception to the afore-mentioned pattern: Maurer et al.’s (2001) Gen-der Congruence Theory, which postulates aconnection between identity, the feedback indi-viduals receive from others about their identityand behavior (termed re?ected-appraisals), andtheir behavior. Here, identi?cation with a role(e.g., breadwinner) in?uences behavior in thatrole if the role is gender-traditional (e.g., bread-winning for men). Re?ected-appraisals only in-?uence gender-nontraditional behaviors (e.g.,caregiving for men). The reason for this, ac-cording to Maurer et al. (2001), is that “becausethe traditional role expectations . . . are clearlyde?ned, women’s and men’s identities . . .should be clearly established independent ofperceived re?ected-appraisals” (p. 312).This theory is supported by numerous ?nd-ings in the literature. Ihinger-Tallman et al.(1993) reported father parenting identity to besigni?cantly correlated with paying child sup-port among divorced fathers. McBride and Rane(1997) reported ?nding no relationship betweenfathers’ parental identity and paternal involve-ment, but mothers’ parental identity was signif-icantly correlated with mothers’ involvement. Asubsequent investigation by Rane and McBride(2000) focusing exclusively on fathers repli-cated those ?ndings.Pasley, Futris, and Skinner (2002) reportedsigni?cant positive correlations between fa-thers’ perceptions of their wives’ perceptions oftheir worth and competence as fathers and thosefathers’ performance of various child-relatedbehaviors. Fox and Bruce (2001) reported sig-ni?cant regression coef?cients for perceived re-?ected-appraisals on paternal behavior, paternalresponsiveness, and a composite measure ofpaternal involvement. Further, the effect of per-ceived re?ected-appraisals on the compositemeasure remained signi?cant even after con-trolling for the effect of paternal identity, whichis precisely what is predicted by Gender Con-gruence Theory for a gender-nontraditionalrole.Maurer et al.’s (2001) own ?ndings largelysupported their Gender Congruence Theory: Fa-thers’ caregiving behaviors were predicted not102 MAURER AND PLECK by their own caregiving identities, but by theirperceived re?ected-appraisals about caregivingfrom their wives; fathers’ breadwinning behav-iors were predicted by their breadwinning iden-tities, but not by their perceived re?ected-ap-praisals. However, the theory was only sup-ported for mothers’ caregiving: Mothers’caregiving behaviors were predicted by theircaregiving identities, not by their caregivingperceived re?ected-appraisals. Mothers’ bread-winning behaviors were predicted by theirbreadwinning identities and not by their per-ceived re?ected-appraisals (the opposite ofwhat was predicted).Revision of Gender Congruence TheoryGiven the ambiguous nature of expectationsfor gender–nontraditional behaviors, the need tosocially reference those behaviors in the ab-sence of a clear identity in those roles, and thechanging social expectations for fathers (Hen-wood & Procter, 2003), which may create a newsocial context for fathering, it may be bene?cialto incorporate aspects of Bandura’s (1989) So-cial Cognitive Theory into Gender CongruenceTheory. Bandura’s theory suggests that individ-uals may model behavior they observe, partic-ularly in ambiguous situations and especially ifthat behavior is enacted by multiple members ofthe individual’s gender. Fathers may look toother fathers to acquire needed skills throughmodeling and determine what behaviors are ex-pected of them.Some prior researchers have investigated thein?uence of fathers’ social networks on theirfathering. These studies have primarily focusedon the size of fathers’ social networks comparedwith those of mothers, focusing especially onthe balance between kin and nonkin networkmembers (Munch, McPherson, & Smith-Lovin,1997; Riley, 1990) and the encouragement andresources provided by fathers’ social networks(Riley, 1990; Russell, 1983, 1986).Daly (1993) reported that the fathers he in-terviewed deliberately observed other fathers tolearn desired parenting skills or techniques andeven sought out “speci?c instances of goodfathering behavior among [their] peers” (p.523). Although Daly (1993) did not quantita-tively test a relationship between the perceivedbehavior of same-sex other parents and one’sown parenting behavior, his study clearly estab-lished that fathers can and do model their fa-thering behavior after what they observe inother fathers. As a result, Gender CongruenceTheory will be expanded here to include thebroader social context and accommodate theperceived behavior of other parents of the samegender in both traditional and nontraditionalroles.We will also attempt to control for parents’behavior in the other role, which was a missingelement in Maurer et al.’s (2001) original test-ing of the theory. Given the substantial evidenceto suggest that breadwinning (measured ashours spent working) is negatively related topaternal involvement (Ishii-Kuntz, Makino,Kato, & Tsuchiya, 2004) and positively relatedto paternal perceptions of not spending enough“quality time” (which could be interpreted as adimension of involvement) with children(Milkie, Mattingly, Nomaguchi, Bianchi, &Robinson, 2004), breadwinning hours should beentered as an independent variable in the care-giving models. Likewise, it is necessary to con-trol for the potential impact of caregiving be-havior on breadwinning behavior, so caregivingbehavior should be entered as an independentvariable in the breadwinning models. Using thisapproach, it will be possible to determine thein?uence that identity, perceived re?ected-ap-praisals, and perceived behavior of other par-ents have on parents’ own gender-traditionaland gender-nontraditional behaviors indepen-dent of the in?uence of their behavior in theother role.Testing our revision of Gender CongruenceTheory will require separate analyses for bothmothers and fathers for both caregiving andbreadwinning behaviors. This investigation isguided by three hypotheses:Hypothesis 1: Parents’ behavior will bepositively predicted by their identity in thegender-traditional role, but not in the gen-der-nontraditional role.Hypothesis 2: Parents’ behavior will bepositively predicted by perceived re?ect-ed-appraisals from their partners in thegender-nontraditional role, but not in thegender-traditional role.Hypothesis 3: Parents’ behavior will bepositively predicted by the perceived be-havior in that role of same-sex other par-103FATHERS’ CAREGIVING AND BREADWINNING ents in the gender-nontraditional role, butnot in the gender-traditional role.MethodsIn this investigation, the target populationwas parents in two-parent families who had atleast one preschool-aged child (2–5 years old).The strategy we chose to locate and recruit theseparents was to contact local child-care centersand laboratory preschools and use them as basesof recruitment. In exchange for ?lling out thequestionnaire and returning it to their child-carefacility, parents received a children’s bookwhich they selected from a provided list.Parents in two-parent families with at leastone child aged 2–5 were recruited at seven sites.The ?rst site was an on-campus laboratory pre-school serving 2- to 5-year-olds in both univer-sity and community families. The second sitewas a similar facility at a local communitycollege. The remaining ?ve sites were state-licensed child-care facilities in the same com-munity. The sites were selected based on thewillingness of their directors to assist in datacollection.ParticipantsAt the ?rst site, 33 of 92 eligible fathers(35.9%) and 39 of 92 eligible mothers (42.4%)returned completed questionnaires. At the re-maining sites, administrative data on parents’marital status were unavailable, so an exactnumber of eligible parents and thus precise par-ticipation rates, could not be determined. Theremaining 14 fathers and 17 mothers were dis-tributed among the other six sites as follows:from the second site, 3 fathers and 4 mothers;from the third site, 1 father and 1 mother; fromthe fourth site, 2 fathers and 2 mothers; from the?fth site, 1 father and 2 mothers; from the sixthsite, 6 fathers and 6 mothers; and from theseventh site, 1 father and 2 mothers. The ?nalsample was 47 fathers and 56 mothers. Onefather and 1 mother were unmarried cohabitors;the remaining 46 fathers and 55 mothers weremarried. (One father and 1 mother listed theirmarital status as “separated,” and given that thefocus of this investigation on marital dynamics,it was decided not to include them in the anal-yses, nor are they represented in the numbersabove.)For the ?rst site, administrative data availablefor all families using the facility made it possi-ble to compare the demographic characteristicsof the 33 fathers and 39 mothers from that sitein the analysis sample with the 59 eligible fa-thers and 53 eligible mothers who did not re-turnquestionnaires. The results of these analysesindicated that there were no signi?cant differ-ences between the groups. For example, samplemothers and nonsample mothers did not signif-icantly differ in their ages, levels of education,or ethnic backgrounds.Because nearly two thirds of the total samplecame from this ?rst site, additional analyseswere conducted to determine whether the par-ticipants from this site were different from par-ticipants at the other sites. The results of theseanalyses also revealed that there were no sig-ni?cant differences between the groups. For ex-ample, fathers at the ?rst site did not differsigni?cantly from fathers at the other sites in thefrequency with which they had male versusfemale children, the ages of their children, ortheir own levels of education.Of the fathers, 80.85% (38 of 47) and 83.93%of mothers (47 of 56) were White. For fathers,the ethnicities of the remaining nine were Afri-can American, 1; Asian, 3; Hispanic, 3; andother, 2. For mothers, the ethnicities of theremaining nine were: African American, 1;Asian, 4; Hispanic, 3; and other, 1. Because ofthe small number of minority participants, eth-nicity was dichotomously coded into White (1)and other (0). Average age of fathers was 38.20years (SD ?5.90), with a mean education levelof 18.30 years (SD ?2.06). Average age ofmothers was 36.20 years (SD ?5.50), with amean education level of 18.02 years(SD ?2.14). Of the fathers, 91.49% (43 of 47)were employed, with 1 father’s status beingunreported. Of the mothers, 71.43% (40 of 56)were employed. The mean number of the sumof weekly paid and unpaid work hourswas 51.62 for fathers (SD ?30.38) and 24.49for mothers (SD ?20.72).Questionnaires asked parents to think of theiractivities with reference to their child; if parentshad more than one child enrolled at their child-care facility, questionnaires instructed parentsto think of their oldest child served by theirchild care facility (“target child”). With this inmind, of the fathers’ children, 46.81% (22) wereboys and 53.19% (25) were girls, with an aver-104 MAURER AND PLECK age age of 4.54 years (SD ?.83). Of the moth-ers’ target children, 42.86% (24) were boysand 57.14% (32) were girls, with an average ageof 4.56 years (SD ?.76). All of these samplecharacteristics were used as control variables.MeasuresCaregiving and Breadwinning Identity andRe?ected-Appraisal Inventory. Parents’ care-giving and breadwinning identities and per-ceived re?ected-appraisals were assessed usingMaurer et al.’s (2001) Caregiving and Bread-winning Identity and Re?ected-Appraisal In-ventory (CBIRAI). The CBIRAI measures theextent to which parents see themselves (iden-tity), see their partners (re?ected-appraisal), andbelieve they are seen by their partners (per-ceived re?ected-appraisal), as caregivers andbreadwinners. Most responses are scored on a5-point agree or disagree Likert scale, with afew items asking participants to indicate theimportance of an item (not at all to extremely).A mean score is calculated for each subscalewith higher scores indicating more of the con-struct (e.g., a mean score of 4 on the caregivingidentity subscale means a participant identi?esmore with the role of caregiver than a partici-pant who has a mean score of 2). A sample itemfor the caregiving identity subscale is “I wouldlike to be remembered for the quality of care Igave my child.”Because analyses were not restricted to thecouple level (which is necessary to use there?ected-appraisal subscale), only the identityand perceived re?ected-appraisal subscales ofthe CBIRAI were used. Alphas for all measuresappear in Table 1.Caregiving Involvement Scale. Parents’caregiving behavior was assessed with the Care-giving Involvement Scale (CIS), adapted fromBruce and Fox’s (1997) Father InvolvementScale (FIS). The FIS is a 21-item measure, withfour subscales (caregiving, socioemotional, ex-ecutive function, and teaching). The FIS wasadapted for use in this study by rewording thedirections to be applicable to both fathers andmothers (i.e., asking participants to think aboutwhat they do as “parents” rather than as “fa-thers”) and using only the subsection of the FISdirectly applicable to caregiving behaviors (sixitems). Items in the CIS ask how frequentlyparents engage in speci?c caregiving activities.Items are rated on a 4-point scale with responsesranging from never or hardly ever,sometimes,often, to almost every day. A sample item asksparents how often they “Assist or superviseyour child in bathing (or personal hygiene).”Caregiving Involvement Scale–Other Par-ents. The perceived caregiving behavior ofother same-gender parents was assessed withthe Caregiving Involvement Scale–Other Par-ents (CIS–OP), which was developed for use inthis study from the CIS, using the same re-sponse format. The six-item CIS–OP asks howfrequently other same-gender parents engage inspeci?c caregiving activities. A sample itemasks parents how often they believe other moth-ers or fathers “Assist or supervise their child inbathing (or personal hygiene).” The scale wascreated as a mean of all the scale’s items.Breadwinning Involvement Scale. Parents’breadwinning behavior was assessed with theMaurer et al. (2001) Breadwinning InvolvementScale (BIS). The BIS is a two-item free-re-sponse scale, asking parents to report their totalweekly paid and unpaid employment hours. Thetwo numbers are then added to create a total ofweekly employment hours.Breadwinning Involvement Scale–Other Par-ents (BIS–OP). The perceived breadwinningbehavior of other same-gender parents wasassessed with the Breadwinning InvolvementScale–Other Parents (BIS–OP), which wasdeveloped for use in this study from the BIS,using the same response format. The two-itemscale asks parents how many paid and unpaidhours they think other same-gender parentswork in a week. This scale is a sum of the twoitems.ResultsA correlational matrix was created to deter-mine the relationship between the control, inde-pendent, and dependent variables for both fa-thers and mothers. Few correlations between thecontrol and dependent variables reached signif-icance, although many of the correlations be-tween independent and dependent variablesreached signi?cance. These results are presentedin Table 1. Because parent’s ethnicity and childgender are dichotomous variables, correlationswith those variables are point-biserial.105FATHERS’ CAREGIVING AND BREADWINNING Table 1Correlations Between Project VariablesVariable PAGE PED ETH CHAGE GENDER CGID CGPRA CISOP CIS BWID BWPRA BISOP BIS?PAGE — .35* .16 ?.14 ?.01 .27 .26 ?.23 .02 ?.15 ?.20 .12 .11 —PED .29* — ?.01 ?.07 .41** .24 .39** ?.10 .23 ?.22 ?.13 .04 ?.09 —ETH .17 .10 — ?.07 ?.02 ?.31* ?.18 .17 ?.08 .28 .49** .11 .44** —CHAGE .01 .03 .18 — .12 ?.07 ?.02 ?.04 .04 ?.18 ?.17 .02 ?.07 —GENDER .15 .25 ?.08 .10 — .08 ?.01 ?.07 .08 ?.06 ?.13 .02 .12 —CGID ?.17 ?.40** ?.16 ?.07 ?.16 — .65*** .25 .51*** ?.32* ?.22 ?.07 ?.10 .74CGPRA ?.29* ?.38** ?.25 ?.09 ?.25 .65*** — .24 .57*** ?.24 ?.17 ?.06 ?.17 .63CISOP ?.12 .12 .01 ?.17 .01 .06 .13 — .47*** .10 .32* ?.18 ?.11 .95CIS ?.22 ?.34** ?.16 ?.06 ?.16 .33* .33* .36** — ?.38** ?.03 ?.20 ?.12 .79BWID .05 .16 .09 ?.18 .12 ?.18 ?.11 .36** — .62*** ?.06 .17 .76BWPRA .11 .02 .08 .09 .15 ?.14 ?.13 .19 ?.08 .59*** — ?.11 .20 .86BISOP .10 .16 .17 ?.03 .17 ?.09 .40** ?.08 ?.11 .22 .19 — .25 —BIS .39** .30* .12 ?.17 .12 ?.18 ?.20 .07 ?.42*** .35** .33* .19 — —Note. Numbers below the diagonal are for mothers (N?56), numbers above the diagonal are for fathers (N?47). Alpha values are for the combined sample. PAGE ?parent’sage; PED ?parent’s education; ETH ?parent’s ethnicity (1 ?white, 0 ?other); CHAGE ?child age; GENDER ?child gender (1 ?girl, 0 ?boy); CGID ?caregiving identity;CGPRA ?caregiving perceived re?ected-appraisal; CISOP ?perceived caregiving behavior of other mothers/fathers; CIS ?own caregiving behavior; BWID ?breadwinningidentity; BWPRA ?breadwinning perceived re?ected-appraisal; BISOP ?perceived breadwinning behavior of other mothers/fathers; BIS ?own breadwinning behavior.*p?.05. ** p?.01. *** p?.001.106 MAURER AND PLECK Multiple Regression AnalysesIn both regressions (caregiving and bread-winning) for both mothers and fathers, controlvariables that were signi?cantly correlated withthe dependent variable were forward entered inthe ?rst block (using the standard default crite-ria of p?.05 to enter and p?.10 to remove).For fathers’ caregiving, no control variableswere entered. For fathers’ breadwinning, fa-thers’ ethnicity (dummy coded as White or non-White) was entered. For mothers’ caregiving,mothers’ education was entered. For mothers’breadwinning, both mothers’ education andmothers’ age were entered. Forward entry waschosen for the control variables because of thealready limited power to detect signi?cant ef-fects for the independent variables, because ofthe small sample size. Independent variableswere force entered into regression. Two-tailedtests of signi?cance were chosen to maintain aconservative estimate. Multicollinearity was as-sessed for all regression models, but none wasevident.For fathers, the caregiving model was signif-icant, F(4, 41) ?8.88, p?.001, R2?.41. Onlytwo of the independent variables achieved sig-ni?cance: caregiving perceived re?ected-ap-praisals, b?0.68, SE ?0.28, p?.05, andperceived caregiving behavior of other fathers,b?0.38, SE ?0.13, p?.01. Neither caregiv-ing identity (b?0.42, SE ?0.32, ns) norbreadwinning behavior (b?0.00, SE ?.00, ns)achieved signi?cance. Results are presented inTable 2.In the fathers’ breadwinning model, only fa-thers’ ethnicity emerged as a signi?cant predic-tor, b?23.50, SE ?9.35, p?.05, and theoverall model was signi?cant, F(5, 40) ?2.52,p?.05, R2?.14. None of the independentvariables emerged as signi?cant: breadwinningidentity, b?2.05, SE ?9.85, ns; breadwinningperceived re?ected-appraisals, b??0.02,SE ?9.28, ns; perceived breadwinning of otherfathers, b?0.41, SE ?0.29, ns; and caregivingbehavior, b??1.08, SE ?5.77, ns. Results arepresented in Table 3.For mothers, the caregiving model was sig-ni?cant, F(5, 49) ?7.21, p?.01, R2?.37.Mothers’ education emerged as a signi?cantpredictor in the model, but it dropped below thep?.05 level of signi?cance in the ?nal model,b??0.43, SE ?0.03, ns. (It was retainedbecause the level of signi?cance was between.05 and .10.) Two of the independent variablesachieved signi?cance: breadwinning behavior,b??0.01, SE ?0.00, p?.01, and perceivedcaregiving behavior of other mothers, b?0.40,SE ?0.11, p?.01. Neither caregiving identity,b?.18, SE ?.18, ns, nor caregiving perceivedre?ected-appraisals, b?0.04, SE ?0.16, ns,achieved signi?cance. Results are presented inTable 2.In the mothers’ breadwinning model, the modelwas again signi?cant, F(5, 45) ?5.62, p?.01,R2?.32. Mothers’ age reached signi?cance,b?6.00, SE ?2.24, p?.05. Of the independentvariables, only caregiving behavior, b??17.42,SE ?5.90, p?.01, reached signi?cance. Bread-winning identity, b?12.99, SE ?7.02, ns, bread-winning perceived re?ected-appraisals, b?2.20,SE ?4.98, ns, and perceived breadwinning be-havior of other mothers, b?0.03, SE ?0.16, ns,Table 2Regression Analysis Predicting Fathers’ and Mothers’ Caregiving BehaviorsVariableFathers(N?47)Mothers(N?56)b?b?Breadwinning behavior 0.00 ?0.01 ?0.01 ?.35**Caregiving identity 0.42 0.20 0.18 .15Caregiving perceived re?ected-appraisal 0.68 0.36* 0.04 .04Perceived caregiving behavior of othersame-sex parents 0.38 0.34** 0.40 .39**Education — — ?0.04 ?.21Adjusted R2.41*** .37***Note: Model signi?cance, reported on model adjusted R2, was assessed with an Ftest.*p?.05. ** p?.01. *** p?.001.107FATHERS’ CAREGIVING AND BREADWINNING all failed to reach signi?cance. Results are pre-sented in Table 3.DiscussionFor fathers, the expanded Gender Congru-ence Theory model was almost fully supported.For ?ve of the six predictions, results were ashypothesized. In the gender-nontraditional roleof caregiving, fathers’ behavior was predictedonly by perceived re?ected-appraisals and theperceived caregiving behavior of other fathers,but not by their own identity. In the gender-traditional role of breadwinning, fathers’ behav-ior was not signi?cantly predicted by eitherperceived re?ected-appraisals or the perceivedbreadwinning behavior of other fathers, but nei-ther was it predicted by fathers’ own breadwin-ning identity (contrary to the predictions of Hy-pothesis 1).Given the prior ?ndings by Maurer et al.(2001) that fathers’ breadwinning identity was asigni?cant predictor of their breadwinning be-havior, this is somewhat surprising. The ?rstinterpretation of this deviation would be to at-tribute it to the fact that in this investigation, wecontrolled for caregiving behavior and fathers’ethnicity in the breadwinning equation, whereasMaurer et al. did not. However, given the factthat the zero-order correlation between bread-winning identity and behavior was not signi?-cant to begin with, that interpretation is notlikely. Rather, it may be that identity is irrele-vant to breadwinning behavior for fathers be-cause low levels of self-identi?cation with thebreadwinner role do not excuse men from thesocial obligation to be a breadwinner (Doucet,2004). As this interpretation would still not ex-plain why Maurer et al. were able to documenta connection between breadwinning identityand behavior, it is apparent that further researchon this topic is required to more fully explorethe nature of the (possible) connection.Despite this deviation from predictions, thedata gave strong support to the theory. Thissupport for the revised Gender CongruenceTheory for fathers provides further support forthe conceptualization of paternal caregiving be-haviors as a function of social expectations.Although this conceptualization is traditionallydiscussed in the literature in terms of mothers’negative in?uences upon paternal caregiving (i.e.,“maternal gatekeeping”; Allen & Hawkins,1999; McBride et al., 2005), it may be bene?-cial to expand this discussion to include theways in which positive expectations can en-courage paternal caregiving, particularly giventhe signi?cantly positive effect of perceived re-?ected-appraisals on fathers’ caregiving. Thatis, it may be more appropriate, particularly froman intervention perspective, to consider theways in which maternal expectations, or lackthereof, for paternal caregiving in?uence fathersto become more involved with caregiving, ratherthan more narrowly focusing on the ways mothersmay restrict paternal involvement.Further, this support suggests that some so-cial modeling may be occurring among fathers.That is, the more involved fathers perceiveother fathers to be, the more they attempt tomodel the level of that involvement (and themore models they may have), which may beTable 3Regression Analysis Predicting Fathers’ and Mothers’ Breadwinning BehaviorsVariableFathers(N?47)Mothers(N?56)b?b?Caregiving behavior ?1.08 ?.03 ?17.42 ?.36**Breadwinning identity 2.05 .04 12.99 .29Breadwinning perceived re?ected-appraisal ?0.02 .00 2.20 .07Perceived breadwinning behavior of othersame-sex-parents 0.41 .29 0.03 .02Ethnicity 23.50 .40* — —Age — — 6.00 .32*Adjusted R2.14* .32***Note: Model signi?cance, reported on model adjusted R2, was assessed with an Ftest.*p?.05. ** p?.01. *** p?.001.108 MAURER AND PLECK directly assisted by observing practical skillsfrom those parents necessary for that involvement.This ?nding may be the most important con-tribution of this investigation. Prior researchershave not assessed or even explored this variableas a potential predictor of fathers’ caregivingbehavior (outside of Daly’s, 1993, observations,as noted in the literature review), which makesthe fact that it emerged as a signi?cant predictorin these analyses more important, especiallyafter we had already accounted for the effect ofcaregiving perceived re?ected-appraisals (whichprior research has established to be a highly sig-ni?cant in?uence on fathers’ caregiving). Futureresearchers should include this potential in?uenceand more fully explore the effect it may have onfathers’ caregiving behaviors.Both perceived re?ected-appraisals and theperceived caregiving behaviors of other fathersare effectively products of fathers’ social cog-nition. That is, fathers’ perceptions of theirwives’ expectations for caregiving and fathers’perceptions of the caregiving behaviors of otherfathers, both of which are fathers’ cognitiveinterpretations and assessments of their socialenvironments, are highly signi?cant positivepredictors of their own caregiving behavior.This suggests that fathers actively de?ne theirpaternal role as caregivers in response to theirsocial perceptions, as postulated in our GenderCongruence Model.For mothers, the data did not generally sup-port the revised Gender Congruence Theory.Only two of the six predictions were supported:Mothers’ breadwinning behavior was not pre-dicted by their breadwinning identities, andmothers’ caregiving behavior was not predictedby their perceived re?ected-appraisals for care-giving. This ?nding is problematic for threereasons. First, the fact that only two of sixpredictions were supported by the data suggeststhat although Gender Congruence Theory maybe useful in predicting fathers’ behaviors, itprobably has limited usefulness for mothers.This conclusion is further suggested by the sec-ond problem, which is that both supported pre-dictions are null predictions and, as such, arenot meaningful empirically. Third, these resultscontradict the ?ndings of Maurer et al. (2001),which indicated that for both behaviors, identitywas a signi?cant predictor. However, the reasonfor the deviation from the Maurer et al. ?ndingsmay be a product of controlling for the otherbehavior in the regression equations. This the-ory is particularly likely given the signi?cant(yet relatively small) correlations between iden-tity and behavior for both caregiving and bread-winning for mothers. It may be that given thesmall sample size in this investigation, therewas insuf?cient power to detect a relationshipbetween identity and behavior after controllingfor the larger effect of the other behavior.Three unanticipated signi?cant ?ndingsemerged for mothers. First, contrary to the pre-dictions of Hypothesis 3, mothers’ caregivingbehavior was signi?cantly predicted by the per-ceived caregiving behaviors of other mothers.Although this result was discussed above forfathers, the same implications hold for mothers:As this is the ?rst direct testing of this variablefor mothers and it emerged as signi?cant overprior successful predictors, future researcherswill need to investigate the effect that this per-ception may have on mothers’ caregivingbehavior.Second, mothers’ age was a signi?cant posi-tive predictor of mothers’ breadwinning behav-ior. The most parsimonious explanation for this?nding is that older mothers are more likely tobe further along in their careers and thus moreestablished in them by the time they have chil-dren, which would make them less likely toleave those careers.Third, mothers’ breadwinning behavior was astrong negative predictor of mothers’ caregiv-ing behavior (and vice versa). This ?nding isconsistent with prior literature on mothers’ em-ployment, which suggests that the more amother is involved with the worker role, the lesstime she has to enact the mother role (Pleck,1985), and may be particularly clear in thisinvestigation since breadwinning behavior wasoperationalized as the number of paid and un-paid hours at work.Additionally, this ?nding is interesting be-cause a similar relationship did not appear forfathers, despite the fact that fathers reportedworking twice as many hours on average asmothers did. Although a few studies have doc-umented a negative association between fa-thers’ work hours and caregiving behaviors(Ishii-Kuntz et al., 2004; Milkie et al., 2004),the overall conclusion in the literature on thesubject is that fathers’ work hours are not con-sistently related to caregiving behaviors (seePleck, 1997, for a review). These ?ndings sug-109FATHERS’ CAREGIVING AND BREADWINNING gest that although caregiving and breadwinningbehaviors may be competitively organized formothers, they are not for fathers, which mayalso help to explain why the revised GenderCongruence Theory explained paternal behav-iors better than maternal behaviors. That is,Gender Congruence Theory conceptualizes theroles of caregiver and breadwinner in a non-competitive orthogonal way in terms of tradi-tional gender assignment rather than as compet-ing roles that individual parents must choosebetween. For use in understanding mothers’ be-havior, Gender Congruence Theory may need toinclude the competitive organization of caregiv-ing and breadwinning for mothers and also bemodi?ed in other ways.Limitations of the StudyArguably the most signi?cant limitation inthis project is that although a project goal was topredict parental behavior, the data were neitherlongitudinal nor experimental. As a result, thedirectionality of the relationships between thepredictor variables and parental behavior cannotconclusively be established nor can causality becon?rmed.Second, the CIS de?nes caregiving behaviorsin a relatively narrow way, which may not cap-ture the extent to which some parents are in-volved with their children. For example, a fathermay decide that the mother is better at providingphysical care to their child than he is, and in thebest interests of the child (as he perceives it), herefrains from providing caregiving so that shecan provide it all. Clearly, his choice could beconceptualized as involvement, but it would notappear as caregiving behavior on his part if theCIS were used. Further, in this investigation, thereliability of the CIS was slightly lower thanthat reported in the literature, particularly formothers. Although the lower reliability ismostly likely a product of a smaller sample size,it is possible that the measure does not capturecaregiving behavior as well for mothers as itdoes for fathers. Additionally, the CIS measurescaregiving behaviors on an entirely differentscale than the BIS uses to measure breadwin-ning behaviors (never to almost every day vs.number of hours). Because the scales are notparallel, any comparisons between caregivingand breadwinning must be made with caution.Third, there are numerous issues with oursample. This sample was relatively small (47fathers and 56 mothers), and, thus, there waslimited power to detect signi?cant relationships,particularly when multiple predictors were si-multaneously entered in the same regressionmodels. Additionally, this sample was fairlyhomogeneous; ethnic and educational diversitywere limited, which compromises the externalvalidity of this study. Ironically, however, thislack of diversity facilitates comparison betweenthis study and prior ones using these measures,because such convenience samples have beentypical (Maurer et al., 2001; Maurer, Pleck, &Rane, 2003).Further, as in many convenience samples,issues of self-selection need to be considered.Although our analyses revealed no differencebetween participants and nonparticipant s (orbetween participants at different sites) on thedemographic variables, there is no way to knowwhether there would have been differences be-tween the groups on the project variables. Fur-ther, rejection rates at the site for which theycould be calculated exceeded 50%. Althoughthis rejection rate further compromises the gen-eralizability of this investigation, it is not at allsurprising. Prior investigations of a similar na-ture have had rejection rates of approximately50%– 66% (Bruce & Fox, 1999; Maurer et al.,2001). Recruiting fathers to participate in re-search, even when one is paying substantialincentives, is exceptionally dif?cult (Cook,Jones, Dick, & Singh, 2005).Future DirectionsHowever, despite these limitations the re-vised Gender Congruence Theory offers apromising new approach to explaining fathers’caregiving and breadwinning behaviors as aproduct of their identities, perceived re?ected-appraisals, and perceived behaviors of other fa-thers. Future researchers could attempt to ad-dress some of the shortcomings of this investi-gation by recruiting more representativesamples of fathers (and mothers) or by explor-ing other ways of operationalizing caregivinginvolvement. In addition, future researcherscould attempt to further re?ne the Gender Con-gruence Theory to more adequately predictmothers’ parenting behaviors, perhaps by ac-counting for the competitive organization of110 MAURER AND PLECK roles among mothers or by assessing the degreeto which mothers perceive a given role as gen-der-congruent or incongruent.ReferencesAllen, S. M., & Hawkins, A. J. (1999). Maternalgatekeeping: Mothers’ beliefs and behaviors thatinhibit greater father involvement in family work.Journal of Marriage & the Family, 61, 199 –212.Aryee, S., & Luk, V. (1996). Balancing two majorparts of adult life experience: Work and familyidentity among dual-earner couples. Human Rela-tions, 49, 465– 487.Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory. 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